Happy marriages can only be built upon the grave
of that misconception. It was held to be a view honoring to women. As a
matter of fact it led to a great deal of cruelty. No doubt women differ
greatly, but in every woman who truly loves there lies dormant the
capacity to become vibrantly alive in response to her lover, and to
meet him as a willing and active participant in the sacrament of
marriage. And till that dormant capacity has been stirred into life
sexual intimacy may be actually repulsive, with the result that
children may be born who are not in the full sense the product of
creative love, and that the relations of husband and wife may remain
difficult and unsatisfying to both.
This is not what God ordained. There is an art of wooing which Nature
teaches to many men, and would, I think, teach to all men if they were
patient and willing to learn. It consists in a love-making that appeals
to the mind, the heart, and ultimately the body, and through it alone
can a woman be attuned for her natural part in marriage. It is her
inalienable right thus to be wooed before sexual intimacy is asked for,
and husbands who are too impatient to offer such wooing do her a real
wrong.
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