Introduction
Sexual dissatisfaction is slowly becoming one of the more important reasons for the breakup of marriages today.
In years past, the woman accepted her role as the submissive partner, oftentimes being denied the sexual satisfaction she deserved by an uninformed or misinformed husband who either did not know how to please her or did not care to. Consequently, the woman was merely a sexual object of the husband-a body-to be taken and used when the notion struck him, to be left unfulfilled when he did not desire her. Or, worse still, she was often brought to the brink of fulfillment only to be left hanging when the husband satisfied himself. More often than not, women of the past were sex-starved and neurotic, with no means of finding a solution to their problems.
With the thousands of so-called sex books on the market today, the open discussions on radio and TV, both the wife and the husband are becoming more sexually aware than they have ever been. No longer is the woman content to be merely a possession of the husband, nor is he content to accept or be denied love at the whim of the wife. They are learning, too, that sex is not a mechanical thing, a procedure to be learned like driving a car or running a machine. Sex is an expression of one's basic personality. We would hardly expect a mean, inconsiderate, ill-mannered man to be an ideal lover when the day's work was over. Sexual love is a body-soul expression of love. To love properly requires the capacity to give love, to accept love and to share love. The inconsiderate person can hardly carry out all three. Mostly, he takes.
A personality that has turned sour, for one reason or another, virtually guarantees an unhappy marriage as well as failure in other areas. And if not failure, at least a curtailing of the potential of one's capabilities. A person can become bitter over some aspect of life, a personal thing, and consequently become turned off in his sex life as well.
There is much to say about sexual maturity and attitude toward sex. Anyone, for instance, can learn the basic functions of the sexual act from a marriage manual. It will teach that person the simple mechanics of the love act, the purely physical functions, but he can never learn techniques. But to really satisfy a wife, a man has to develop the special technique that will satisfy his wife. Another man may have an entirely different set of rules to guide him. Women, more than men, are too often convinced that to enjoy sexual love is degrading, even sinful.
In this work, we see where these theories apply to both a male subject and a female one. Each has a partner who has not been properly schooled in how to pass love from themselves to their partner through sex. Each, in turn, is starved for sexual fulfillment, and because of this starvation, they are victims to the temptations outside the home, and consequently drawn to each other. Yet, while it is true that sexual fulfillment involves more than the physical, constant failure on the physical level can corrupt and destroy a marriage through the spiritual and emotional level. In this case, it destroys two.
We can pursue these failings on the part of the brother and sister to the inadequate or total lack of sexual teaching to the father, who himself is completely devoid of feelings for anyone but himself. And if we were to place the blame on the father, he, in turn, could extend it to his parents, and so on.
Although the son of the tyrannical father is involved in an illicit affair with another woman, this affair did not come about by some overpowering sexual desires from someone other than his wife, for she was more than willing to fulfill the sexual obligation of her marriage. We find the motivating force here more one of greed, to have something that belonged to someone else. His sexual performance with the other woman is as woefully inadequate as it is at home.
On the other hand, the daughter of the uninformed father finds herself viewing sex as something animalistic and dirty. Anything but the so-called normal sex is strictly taboo. She submits to brief sexual encounters when she feels there is no other way out.
Counseling by a professional, heart-to-heart talks and simple, whispered hints can very often be the solution to many marital problems that stem from sexual dissatisfaction. However, where there is an aversion to anything sexual instilled at an early age, it is a problem most marriage partners cannot solve. Nor can a partner alter a personality that has been warped from the time of birth. Unfortunately, our subjects ran head-on into just such problems-and ended up dissolving their marriages to find happiness with each other.
With one in every three marriages ending in divorce, it would be interesting to learn exactly how much sex had to do in the dissolution of these marriages.
The Publishers