Your ability to undertake marriage successfully has already been determined in large part before you even start. It has been determined by experiences you have had with sex generally and with the opposite sex particularly. Possibly you are already seriously handicapped by repressions and fears on the subject.
To ignore or fear sex is no more sensible than to ignore any of the other emotions you possess. Sexual desire is a natural desire. Without it your personality would become impoverished. Without it there would be few marriages. Without it there would be few children and few homes. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of or be whispered about.
You can have love without sex and sex without love but neither alone is very satisfying or enriching. For example many men are capable of sexual activity with women for whom they could find no pleasure in social associations. Were it not for this fact there would be no prostitution. Likewise it is true there are many wives who love their husbands and engage in sexual activity with them, but without feeling any sexual urge whatsoever and without feeling any physical satisfaction.
The ideal arrangement, however, is that in which the two people have genuine love and affection for each other and at the same time have strong sex desire for each other and find sexual satisfaction in each other.
A very large proportion of the fears, repressions and anxieties that people suffer from involve sex one way or another. Many of these repressions are revealed in such things as frigidity and impotence. The individual who is ashamed and afraid of sex will be repressed in married life unless the attitude is corrected, and will find it difficult to adjust to marriage. When such persons are married the feelings of shame or guilt about sex may prevent sexual satisfaction. This lack of satisfaction, and the tension that goes with it, may produce nervousness, aches and pains and even nervous breakdowns.
Many married people, particularly wives, suffer from repression. While sexual maladjustment is not the only cause of unhappiness in marriage it does play a significant part. It is estimated that one-fifth of all married people turn to masturbation as one of the ways to reduce the sexual tensions not satisfied through intimate relationships with the mate.
How do these so-called repressions develop? Where do we learn about sex?
Our sex experiences—whether good or bad—started when we were babies. We reacted in a very favorable way to the fondling, caressing and other skin stimulation of our mothers. Love and affection came to be associated in our minds with fondling and stroking. Sometimes as the baby grows older the parent lavishes too much affection on the child because the mother is hungry for affection which is not forthcoming from her husband. This excessive love-conditioning may cause the child to become intensely attached to the mother and makes it difficult for the child to break away as it grows up. Not only this, but in addition the excessive fondling and favorable attention may cause the child to have an excessive desire for sympathy and social approval. Ergo, we have a “spoiled child.” This spoiled child grows up feeling very sorry for himself and insecure when he is not receiving sympathy. In marriage, he or she becomes quite possessive because he or she wants to be the constant center of attention.
But to get back to when you were a growing child. Many of the feelings of guilt, shame or fear that people suffer from concerning sex begin then.
Perhaps the child is detected in the act of exploring his sex organs. It is probably normal curiosity but the parents punish him so severely that the child feels exceedingly guilty about it.
Perhaps the child hears a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word. Proud of this new acquisition he comes home and uses it with his parents. The parents are dumfounded, show their intense disapproval, and may wash the child’s mouth out with soap.
Or perhaps the child asks how babies are made and the parent may rebuff the child or act so mysterious that the child concludes he has done something for which he should be ashamed.
On the other hand, if as a child you had a confidential relationship with your parents and found that when you took such problems to them they would try to give you answers you could comprehend you developed a normal, healthy attitude toward sex. Repression usually occurs only when something happens to us for which we feel ashamed or guilty or fearful.
It would seem to us that no child should be permitted to reach the age of five or six without knowing where babies come from. It furthermore seems to us that no child should reach the age of ten without knowing what produces or causes babies.
Now we come to the period that affected you most profoundly in your sexual development, puberty. Can you remember how your life and body were changed from the time you were twelve to fourteen?—that is, when you were first endowed with sexual capacity. Whether you were a boy or girl, your sex glands (gonads) began pouring their hormones into the blood stream in great quantities. Perhaps you did not realize it at the time but you began feeling more tense, more energetic, and began exhibiting what might be called “animal spirits.” Farmers shake their heads sadly at their youngsters during this period and resign themselves to the fact that the youths won’t be over “Fool’s Hill” until they are sixteen.
It probably was during your early teens that you had your first great “love” affair, if you were normal. Puppy love is one of the sweetest loves that one ever has. It usually makes its appearance at about the time the girl begins to menstruate and the boy becomes capable of having sexual emissions.
This first love of yours was romantic and idealistic. Probably you “fell in love” with a girl in the next aisle, passed notes to her and picked flowers on the way to school for her. You walked home together after school and if you did manage to conquer your embarrassment and kiss, it is a kiss you will never forget.
You did not realize that those hormones pulsing through your body were responsible for this “crush” and did not realize why you were more tense and energetic. To reduce the tension, though, you looked at each other and something about your past conditioning made each of you find something appealing in the other. Sometimes these first “loves” endure but more likely you are soon both in “love” with new “flames” that suddenly appeared more appealing. Puppy love, you see, is an early version of infatuation.
As a child your sexual feelings were diffused over the body surface but with puberty those feelings came more and more to be localized in certain sensitive areas of the body, called “erogenous zones,” if you had normal contacts with the other sex. In the case of girls whose contact with sex is carefully guarded, however, it is quite possible that sex desire may remain diffused until marriage and the loss of virginity.
The appearance of the menstrual discharge can be a profoundly frightening event for a girl unless she has been prepared to expect it. Often it marks the beginning of fears that carry over even into marriage.
Take the case of Alice, a school superintendent’s daughter, who was reared in a stern atmosphere of morality. When she asked where babies came from her mother first rebuked her and when she persisted in inquiring the mother said they were brought in the medical bags of physicians. When she reached the age of menstruation, for which her mother had not prepared her, she thought a terrible calamity had befallen her. She naïvely believed for several months that she was having a baby. Later the only information she ever acquired on sex was through bull sessions with other girls at college, and there the information was misleading. She was fearful of sex and when, during her freshman year, a boy tried to kiss her she reacted very strongly. She felt that she must not be a nice girl or a boy would not think of trying to kiss her. Her mother had told her that nice girls did not kiss boys.
Today Alice is twenty-nine and still not married. Furthermore she seems like a very poor prospect. She has reacted frigidly to all overtures of grown men to kiss her even though she feels she should marry. To her “sex” is animal passion and its only rightful function is reproduction. She has so many repressions about sex that she cannot act normally in the presence of someone of the opposite sex.
Here is how the repressions operate with Alice. She does her best not to think about sex. She avoids situations or circumstances that would involve sex by staying away from people of the opposite sex, by not going to dances and by refraining from doing things that would in any way bring sex to mind. Her life is a desperate hide-and-seek with sex. Furthermore her repression is so effective that she won’t even admit that a sexual problem exists for her.
Sometimes direct fear conditioning may occur. In one girl who was referred to the Penn State clinic there was an intense fear of being with well-educated people. When all the facts were learned, it was discovered that in her early teens the girl had been detected masturbating by her mother. To frighten her out of the habit the mother told her that such a practice would change her facial appearance so much that any educated person looking at her would know she was a masturbator. The girl, already ashamed of her habit, felt so much guilt that she started avoiding anyone who had a college education because she believed such people could see her secret in her face. It took many months of treatment to get her to the place where she could associate with college people with ease.
It is our opinion that much of the sexual maladjustment of the world is brought about by parents giving their children the impression that sex is shameful, disgusting, fearful or nasty.
One young man came into the psychological clinic complaining of severe indigestion, heartburn and excruciating stomach pains. When asked what he thought the trouble was he said it probably was caused by his habit of drinking a couple of beers three or four times a week. He had made many efforts to stop drinking the beer, but in vain. The companionship of the other young men with whom he drank, the feeling of tension reduction that he felt while drinking, the partial release of some of his inhibitions under alcohol all prevented him from breaking the habit. He had never been drunk yet he was sure that the half-dozen glasses of beer a week were causing his stomach trouble and would ultimately lead to ulcers or cancer.
In working with this young man it was found that he had begun masturbating in adolescence. His father had discovered this and had severely denounced him for the practice. The boy could not, or did not, give up masturbation and was in constant fear that he would go insane because his father told him that continued masturbation always led to insanity. In reading an old-fashioned book on sex which his father gave him, the boy ran across a statement to the effect that alcohol weakened the sex drive. He was so anxious to reduce his own drive, for fear of insanity, that he began drinking beer habitually. He was so sure the alcohol was reducing his sex drive that he stopped masturbating. Actually, of course, the sex drive was still present and his repression and anxiety were transferred from masturbating to beer drinking, with the physical symptoms already described. By helping the young man understand how he had become unfavorably conditioned to masturbation (which, while an inferior or substitute adjustment, is a natural act) he lost all of his stomach symptoms and gained a wholesome attitude about sex.
How can sexual inhibitions and repressions be “unlearned?” The best thing to do of course is consult a good clinical psychologist or competent psychiatrist. Extensive psychotherapy may be needed. But here are some things that an individual can do that may help:
—Develop a friendly confidential relationship with some other person who can be trusted and bit by bit unburden yourself of your fears, anxieties, problems and frustrations. Simply getting things out of one’s system brings tension release. Not only that but as one talks about his problems and feelings toward them, he begins to define the problem and see possibilities of attacking and solving the problem himself. And the friend may have some helpful suggestions.
—Deliberately associate with people of the opposite sex as much as possible if repression is present. Gradually this will help reduce tensions as you become used to them and if the conditioning is favorable you may achieve wholesome and normal reactions to the opposite sex.
—Acquire adequate information about sexual behavior. Good books are available today in the field of sex (note bibliography in the back of this book).
—Even bull sessions can be helpful though much of the information you will hear may be erroneous or inadequate. The freedom of expression in the sessions and the opportunity to talk help one feel less repressed and more natural when sexual matters come up.
All young unmarried people should realize that the sexual emotion is just as much a hunger as a hunger for food and that in marriage their personality is enriched when the sexual hunger is satisfied.
While all this association with the opposite sex is going on, the girl or young man is learning what kind of a mate he wants in marriage. It is only through these experiences (starting with puppy love) that they begin to set standards and qualifications of the persons they would like to marry. The typical boy or girl needs to date a good many persons before they know the kind they would like to have as a mate, to decide upon the minimum standards they wish.
In going with one girl the boy learns to appreciate music and decides he wants a wife who can play the piano. In going with another girl he finds he wants a girl who is brunette, who is reasonably tall, who is relatively slim. In going with a third girl he discovers he wants a person who has as much education as he does and who is interested at least politely with mechanical things, which happen to be his passion. In going with still another girl he discovers that it is important to him for her to have control of her temper, to be friendly to people, to be gracious in manner, to be kind and considerate. And so it goes. It is only through such experiences that a man gradually learns what he wants in a wife and what is important to him.
In contrast, it is ignorance of what one wants that may prevent you from ever achieving a happy marriage. Not knowing what you want or need, you may marry the first person with whom you become infatuated.
Today there are nearly twenty-five thousand different occupations in the country. More people are completing high school—and college—than ever before in history. The radio and automobile have broadened man’s horizon. Thus for the man today a selection of a wife from among a half-dozen girls whom he has known would be a hazardous selection. As we have said before, he would need to know at least twenty-five eligible single girls—and date at least a dozen of them—before he could be fairly sure of finding one that would meet his wants and needs.