Chapter 4: Physical Harmony 1: The Point of View

People who have a wholehearted and unselfish devotion to each other will learn some things almost instinctively, yet in other matters they will need instruction. No person is born a husband or a wife, but the honest-hearted lover can learn to be one or the other. It is worthy of special emphasis that the two must continue to be lovers if they are to know fully what it means to be husband and wife, to love with heart and mind and soul and also to love with the physical nature.

The existence of physical differences enables the mates to benefit and supplement each other in many ways. Marriage is founded on the differences which add to mutual attraction. Without these differences life would be shorn of the romance of courtship, and the joys of family experience. Because of them, married lovers are able to charm and delight each other in many endearments of daily life.

At the same time their differences in emotional nature require understanding. The comparatively steady nature of the husband's emotional life makes it all more necessary that he understand the ebb and flow of his wife's vitality, from the periods when she is less vigorous physically but unusually sensitive emotionally, to the times when superlatively full of life she longs for fullest renewal of romance. The wife should not expect her husband to share her moods fully, but taking him as he is, she should be delicately skilful in stimulating and appropriating his manly impulses of love. With such an understanding the mates will be friends and partners of the closest and dearest kind, and more. The something more is expressed in the sex relationship.

Sex in marriage is not merely a physical pleasure but an expression of pleasure in marriage itself. However it is not, as some have seemed to think, the only key to marital happiness.' Marriage is a union of personalities and the sex relationship is an expression and a symbol of that union. Harmony in personal relations aids physical harmony, and vice versa.

Formerly some held that only men were strongly sexed. A better understanding reveals that while individuals differ greatly the sexual needs of women are as real as those of men although different. The fact that the sex impulse is more easily aroused in men, and that in some cases it is never fully awakened in women, has misled many about woman's nature, but the wife who is normal in this respect may congratulate herself that she is not lacking in one of the endowments of a complete personality. She can the more perfectly give and receive full happiness in marriage and can experience a harmony with her husband that will strengthen their union.

The powerful natural energy of sex becomes an aid in marriage when both mates maintain their attractiveness for each other, and when they understand how to use their marital union as an expression of love and of delight in each other.
A helpful point of view about the sexes is given in the Book of Genesis, in which we have the statement that God made the race male and female. This is followed shortly by the declaration, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

A less happy idea, coming down from ancient times and still persisting in some quarters, is that the body is evil and is an impediment to the soul. This leads to an unworthy view of bodily functions, whereas respect for marriage makes it natural for us to think of marital union as an expression of love and fellowship.

This is in accord with a right understanding of the place of physical things, for they get their meaning in relation to their use. As in the piano the metal and wood, though material, are aids to the production of music, as the fingers of the artist are identified with his work, so the body is an instrument of personality, and not an impediment unless abused.

In marriage the. element of mutual respect and of regard for the sacredness of the family makes sexual union a fine and delicate means of expression of the grace of true love. When this outward expression is frustrated the excellence of the personal relationship is likely to be impaired through resulting nervous tensions. Sexual union in marriage, then, is not thought of as a duty which one mate owes to the other, but as a most intense expression of conjugal devotion.

This also is a reason why sex outside marriage defeats the aim of our complete nature, which calls not merely for an appeasement of the sex hunger, but for a satisfying and stable family life. This gift when used for love and the family builds up personality, but used irresponsibly it makes fora shallow and distorted nature, which cannot permanently satisfy the love needs of marriage. The sexual union of a husband and wife ought to be a symbol and expression of their complete love, trust and self-giving to each other.