tion>Marie Stopes
Married Love
Published by Good Press, 2020
EAN 4064066405878
Table of Contents
Editor's Preface
The truly monogamic couple, where the man and the woman go chaste to the marriage-bed, and go through life in mutual love and respect, these feelings growing stronger as the years go by, finding full satisfaction in each other, without any desire for any other man or woman–what nobler, what more appealing ideal can one conjure up? Nor is it an utterly unrealizable ideal, for in spite of the sneers of the cynics, there are such couples, even at the present time and even in our largest Babylons …
We cannot prevent the cynics from sneering, but even they must admit that monogamy is here, is the dominant system, is the only socially approved and legally permitted system, and we have to deal with it. And those radical sexologists who do not believe that monogamy is the best system of sexual relationship, who are sure that it will not survive for all eternity, that it will be replaced in the future by a higher adjustment, will agree, even if they do so reluctantly, that for a few years to come–say five hundred to a thousand–it will be the only feasible, the only socially admissible and legally sanctioned system.
This being the case, it becomes the sexologist's most sacred duty to do everything in his power to make the monogamic relationship as pleasant as possible, to remove as far as possible all removable causes of friction, to steer the frail matrimonial bark in safe channels, to guard it from being wrecked on the Scylla of asceticism or the Charybdis of excess; in short to help the Man and the Woman to go through life in mutual love and respect, finding full satisfaction in each other, without any desire for any other man or woman.
This is the object of Dr. Stopes' fine book. It would be too soon to expect any one work to succeed in converting every home from the hell that it often is into the paradise that it should be; but if a careful reading of it preserves the temper of some men, improves the health and cures the insomnia of some women, if it saves a few homes from disruption, it will be decidedly worth while, and its author will be called blessed–and will deserve to be.
There is plenty of love outside of marriage; there is not enough in marriage; and they who labor to augment and intensify Love in Marriage are doing good pro-social work.
Dr. William J. Robinson
Author's Preface
MORE than ever to-day are happy homes needed. It is my hope that this book may serve the State by adding to their number. Its object is to increase the joys of marriage, and to show how much sorrow may be avoided.
The only secure basis for a present-day State is the welding of its units in marriage: but there is rottenness and danger at the foundations of the State if many of the marriages are unhappy. To-day, marriage is far less happy than appears on the surface. Too many who marry expecting joy are bitterly disappointed; and the demand for "freedom" grows: while those who cry aloud are generally unaware that it is more likely to have been their own ignorance than the "marriage-bond" which was the origin of their unhappiness.
It is never easy to make marriage a lovely thing; and it is an achievement beyond the powers of the selfish, or the mentally cowardly. Knowledge is needed, and as things are at present, knowledge is almost unobtainable by those who are most in want of it.
The problems of the sex-life are infinitely complex, and for their solution urgently demand both sympathy and scientific research.
I have some things to say about sex, which, so far as I am aware, have not yet been said, or if said will bear repeating and reëmphasizing, things which seem to me to be of profound importance to men and women who hope to make their marriage beautiful.
This little book is less a record of a research than an attempt to present in easily understandable form the clarified and crystallized results of long and patient investigations. Its simple statements are based on a very large number of first hand observations, on confidences from men and women of all classes and types, and on facts gleaned from wide reading.
My original contributions to the age-long problems of marriage will be found principally in Chapter IV; also in Chapters V, and VIII. The other chapters fill in what I hope is an undistorted and unexaggerated picture of the potential beauties and realities of marriage.
The whole is written simply, and for the ordinary untrained reader, though it embodies some observations which will be new even to those who have made scientific researches on the subjects of sex and human physiology.
I do not touch upon the many human variations and abnormalities which bulk so largely in most books on sex, nor do I deal with the many problems raised by incurably unhappy marriages.
In the following pages I speak to those–and in spite of all our
