Foreword
In our society, marriage is virtually a sacred institution. Marriage, ideally, is meant to fulfill the various needs of men and women and to form a well-balanced home environment for the rearing of children who will grow to become an integral part of society and thus perpetuate the mores of that same society. That is the ideal situation, but within the context of that ideal, there are a multitude of variations. And, increasingly, it seems, marriages tend to founder and end in the divorce court.
With the coming of the much-publicized sexual revolution, new and often daring methods are being tried to hold marriages together and make them work make them satisfying and pleasurable to both partners. The market is flooded with marriage-counseling books of all sorts by psychologists, sex researchers and those not-so-expert but nearly all join in advising that the marital partners discuss their needs and try to variety or else experiment with new methods or positions of achieving sexual satisfaction. As long as both partners work together on their sexual and marital problems, a satisfactory solution is usually possible.
Some new departures such as wife-swapping are admittedly controversial, but in many cases, they have been found to enhance the marriage and can be a method of holding it together, rather than splitting it apart. However what happens when one of the two partners refuses not only to discuss their problems but also refuses to satisfy his wife sexually? A Victorian wife might well-accept this lapse as a normal and most acceptable state of affairs. But the contemporary wife, more often than not, has been educated to a realization of her own sexual needs as normal, And she tends to feel that she has a right to sexual satisfaction.
In A Lonely Wife's Need, author George Miller portrays just such a situation. Betty Winslow is essentially a normal, healthy young wife with normal sexual appetites. But after over three years of marriage, her husband has become so immersed in his job that he no longer has the time or the energy to satisfy his wife's sexual needs. Moreover, he is away from home for weeks at a time. Betty Winslow tries to understand, tries to meet her own needs as well as she can, but eventually her growing frustration becomes more than she can handle, and she furtively, guiltily seeks out other partners to fulfill her needs. And, when her husband finally discovers her infidelity for which he is ultimately responsible Mr. Miller adds his own twist to the outcome.
We, The Publishers, believe that the mature reader will find A Lonely Wife's Need an honest and edifying portrayal of one problem of our contemporary society. We believe this well-written novel will be a welcome addition to the adult reader's library of contemporary mores.
-The Publishers Sausalito, California November, 1973