sexual relationships outside of marriage
“all love must have its responsibilities, or it will degrade and dissipate itself in mere sentiment or sensuality.”
i find this sentence written in an old notebook, one that for a long time i have not been using. i took the book up by chance, when my eyes lighted on this saying; at once i decided to place it at the beginning of this chapter on sexual relationships outside of marriage. i want to make it clear at the very start that it is far indeed from my purpose to make easy the way of irregular unions or at all to loosen the responsibilities that ought to bind men and women.
the difficulties of writing upon all questions of sexual conduct are very real. almost always one is suspected of advocating license and of disbelief in marriage, so commonplace is it to misunderstand, so easy to misrepresent. for not only is there prejudice to encounter, which on no question is so obstinate as it is on this one that we are now considering of unregulated love, but we have to deal with so many different problems, taking account of many opposed facts, where threads are crossed and entangled and at best can be patched only roughly together. i plead for a patient recognition of the real seriousness of this problem, which, i am certain, will have to be faced in the near future if our sexual life and marriage are to be freed from secret disgrace that is unbearable.
[230]
we have found in the two previous chapters what all of us must know from our own experience of life, that some women and men are by their temperament unsuited for monogamous marriage and the duties of parenthood. often, i would even say as a rule, these individuals are strongly sexual. they will not, because with the character they have, they cannot, live for any long period celibate. they will marry to gain permanent sexual relief or they will buy temporary relief from prostitutes, unless they are able to seek satisfaction in an irregular union.
now i affirm it as my conviction that the first and second of these courses are likely to lead to greater misery and sin than the third course; and of the three, the first, in my opinion, is the worst. i have no doubt at all on this matter. no one, who is not blind to the facts of life, can close their eyes to the evil and suffering that a coercive monogamy forces upon those people who are unfitted and do not desire to fulfil the obligations and duties of living faithfully with one partner. and i would ask all those who stand in fear of any change or reform in our marriage laws or of any open toleration of wider opportunities for sexual friendships to consider this fact: the discredit which has fallen upon monogamous marriage arises largely from the demoralising lives lived under its cover by those unsuited for enduring mating.
our moral code is, however, much less ruled by law than by custom and the united will of the community. it is for this reason that i want to force men, and even more women, to think practically on these matters. my own opinion is firm. apart from the fact that the disproportion in the number of the sexes in this country makes marriage impossible for all and condemns great numbers of[231] women to sterile celibacy (a question i have dealt with elsewhere[84]), i am persuaded of the need for much wider facilities for honourable partnerships outside of permanent marriage; such unions are, i am sure, necessary in order to harmonise our sexual life and meet the desires of a large, and i believe increasing, number of women and men, whose exceptional needs our existing institutions and customs ignore or crush.
let us view these questions in the light of their results. most of us fail to meet the facts. we never realise the evil of this hypocrisy—love everywhere carried on secretly, that is acting always as a disturbing force in our sexual life—it is a worm that gnaws unceasingly at the roots of marriage and destroys too often the most beautiful blossoms of love.
one great source of difficulty arises from the want of frankness in our thoughts. especially is this the case with women, who throughout their lives have had the great fundamental facts of life clothed in euphemisms, until it seems as if they have succeeded, by the help of many fictitious aids, in concealing the natural outward signs of the existence of sex. and largely from these concealments our every idea of sex has become tainted with sentiment and vulgarity. we can hardly speak of the subject even to our children without an apology.
the actions and emotions of life undraped with lies seem to most of us anathema; we, who have so veneered our lives that we know no longer of what wood they are made; we, who for generations have been so covered with shameful[232] concealments, deceiving even ourselves, and are impervious to the claims of that ill-bred creature—life.
and how deep we have wandered into sin in seeking to escape from it!
need we put up with this? must we turn our eyes away for ever from things as they are—stifle our desires in fear of what we shall do?
the sex-needs almost always are dealt with as though they stood apart and lay out of line with any other need or faculty of our bodies. this is, in part, due to the secrecy which has kept sex as something mysterious. we have most of us been trained from our childhood into indecent secretiveness. but there is as well a deeper reason, and it will be a long time before we can change it. sex is so powerful in most of us, and, when from any cause awakened into consciousness, occupies really so large a part of our attention, that we are afraid of ourselves, and this reacts in fear of any open acknowledgment even in our thoughts of our own sex-needs. still less can we grant the sex-needs of others, perhaps stronger and different from our own need.
it is necessary to face very frankly this tremendous force of the sex-passion, for the most part veiled in discussion. many women and some men do not realise at all the immense complications of sex, or understand the claims that passion makes on many natures. almost necessarily in any inquiry into these questions of sexual conduct one’s opinions are biased by temperament and personal experience. we are dealing with forces in which the individual element cannot be set aside. it is foolishness always to preach continence. sexual abstinence is possible without great effort for some people, it is not possible for all. i[233] am certain we have to recognize this fact, and to allow for its action. it is not what we want people to do, but what they will do, that we are considering.
if we look at the matter practically, it is of course necessary to remember that this question of the possibility of, as well as the advantage to be derived from, sexual abstinence is an entirely different one, as it relates to the time before, or after, the first experience of love. the sex desires are strong when roused, but when not definitely aroused, the ideal of chastity asserts itself, and for long periods these desires may not greatly occupy the conscious imagination. it is clear that the physical problem cannot be, and ought not to be, considered apart from the will. great good in some cases may be done by establishing control over thought.
it is, however, idle to count on a course of thought and action being taken by the rough majority among us which so much of our civilisation and daily environment makes difficult and indeed impossible. a race of young men and women surrounded with shameful concealments and bred to a blind acceptance of wrong sexual conditions, accustomed to an atmosphere of sniggering and suggestiveness in connection with the central facts of love and life—such a race cannot have, much less practise, an ideal of true chastity.
these wrong and vulgar conditions without doubt have acted more strongly against men than against women. and i would note in passing, that here, as i believe, we find one explanation of the greater continence among unmarried women than among unmarried men. it is not because satisfaction for the sex-needs is more necessary for the health and well-being of men than it is for the health[234] and well-being of women—a statement i do not believe; nor is it proved that this absence of conscious sex-desires necessarily implies the absence of unconscious sex-action; all that can be claimed is that the sexual impulses have been diverted into different expressions, and the explanation of such diversion is to be sought in the boy’s and young man’s education and life, which forces sex so much more strongly into the conscious thought and attention.
we are dealing with a question very difficult to solve. on this assumption that the sex-needs of the man are more imperative than the sex-needs of the woman, much that is false has been accepted as true; there are many who have advocated a “duplex sexual morality,” and while demanding from the woman complete sexual abstinence until she marries, regard this as impossible in the case of men. such a separation as this between the sex-needs of man and the sex-needs of woman is, in my opinion, a very grave error. celibacy is unnatural and harmful in man, it is at least equally unnatural and harmful in woman.
now, it is on this question of the sex-needs of women that i find myself, as i have suggested already, in such direct opposition to the great majority of women, numbers of whom do not, will not, admit to a consciousness of any kind of sexual need. i believe they are quite honest, but i know they are mistaken.
the doctrine of chastity being the natural and special virtue of women is entirely false. complete abstinence from love cannot be borne by women through a long period of years without producing serious results on the body and the mind. and these results are by no means clearly dependent on a conscious knowledge of unsatisfied sex. the evil may be pronounced even when the woman[235] herself has not the slightest knowledge of her real needs. in many women the penalty is paid in an unceasing and wearying restlessness of mind and body. we have also to face the fact that prolonged and enforced abstinence may act to cultivate a morbid obsession with sexual things. i believe that the celibate often is less chaste than the normally sexual individual. this may seem to be a wanton charge to some, but i am not speaking without due consideration.
i know well that some among my readers, and in particular women, will say that i am wrong, many will accuse me of exaggerating and complain that i see sex in everything; the few only will know that i am right. i would, however, refer all those who doubt to the researches of freud and his followers, which have proved in the most conclusive way that the manifestations of sex may be concealed in numberless guises. without some understanding of the “unconscious” it is useless to attempt to deal with these questions. we need to realise that the fact of an individual, or group of individuals, being unconscious of the presence of sex does not prove that sex is not acting strongly and often harmfully within them. nay, we may go further and say that could it be proved that desire was absent and no sex difficulties of any kind be discovered, this is no reason why we should necessarily be too satisfied. if no kind of action is apparent, it is very probable that some deep evil is at work, which hinders sex from a more healthy and open expression.
i am haunted by the fear that the careless reader will think i am writing against chastity. this is not so. i would affirm again, with all the power that i have, that compulsory sexual abstinence may not be confused with voluntary chastity. we must be very clear in our thought[236] about this. we can never establish an ideal of true chastity until we have rooted out from our social life all the unnatural and empty forms of chastity. the long waiting for marriage which economic and other causes have forced upon us, more and more increases the difficulties of maintaining any true chastity. it is a great evil which almost always wastes the energies of life.
there are very many women (as also these are men) who are moral, because they are too great cowards to be immoral. the reasons for chastity must in many cases be sought in the poverty of experience and the difficulty of obtaining love, in the hard binding of circumstances, and, even more often, in the terror of being found out. respectability is the strong moral safeguard of woman. the conception of faithfulness to one mate (the true chastity) is as strong in many men as it is in any woman, a fact to which i gladly bear witness, from my knowledge of the men i have known. it is too commonly taken for granted that sex-passion is less refined in men and different from sex-passion in women. i am sure in many cases it is not true. i am not going to discuss the question further, as it is one that cannot easily be proved.
it is, however, very necessary to break down the idea that for the impulses of sex, with their immense complications and differences, there is one general rule either for men or for women. in every case the element of personal idiosyncrasy must be taken into account, and, for this reason, the difficulties of these questions are enormously complex. nor is it possible, i am sure, to make any arbitrary judgments. to me the man or woman who is able to live a celibate life is not necessarily better than the man or woman who is not. i may prefer one type, i may dislike[237] the other, but this also is a matter of my personal idiosyncrasy. we cannot safely class those who differ from ourselves as wrong, and set them down as fit only for suppression and restraint. we have to put aside those shrieks of blame that are possible only to the ignorant.
it is all very well to preach the ideal of complete sexual abstinence until marriage, but there are the clear, hard conditions of contemporary circumstances for all but the really rich, who can marry when they want to do so without other consideration, and the very poor who marry young because they have nothing at all to consider. we have to face the presence amongst us to-day of an amount of suffering through enforced celibacy which is acting in many directions in degrading our sexual lives. any number of these sufferers, both the unmarried and the married who are ill-mated, are everywhere amongst us. i need not say more to prove this: the facts face us all, unless, indeed, we are too ignorant and too prejudiced to know what is happening.
many new lessons will have to be learnt. i would suggest as a first step towards honesty and health, that we ought to claim an open declaration of the existence of any form of sexual relationship between a woman and a man. we shall, i believe, do this, if not now, then later, because we are finding out the evils that must ensue, both to the individuals concerned and to the society of which they are members, by forcing men and women into the dark, immoral way of concealments.
it is ridiculous to say, as many do, that sexual relationships between two people affect no one but themselves, unless a child is born. the partners in even the strongest and purest mutual passion have no right to say to society,[238] “this is our business and none of yours.” the consequences may be so grave and wide for society that the deed can never be confined to the interests of the pair concerned. and the sexual partnership that is kept secret will work anti-socially just in the same way as any other secret partnership. opportunity will be given to those who desire to sin and escape the responsibilities of the partnership, while other men and women, who wish to and would act honourably, find the way so difficult that in nine cases out of ten they fail in their endeavors. many unions that now are shameful would not be shameful if the parties had not been driven into concealments, which cannot fail to act in a way that is immoral.
we must see things a little more as they are. we must accept ourselves as we are. we must do more than this, we must accept others as they are, and cease from blaming them when we find them different from ourselves. we must give up being hypocrites. to force every one to accept the one form of union is not the wisest way to deal with the matter. we must understand what is the result of our doing this. it does not prevent people from acting wrongly. anything may be done, any sexual partnership be undertaken, however shameful, as long as it is hidden. we shall have more morality, not less, by an open recognition of honourable sexual friendships entered into outside the permanent binding of monogamous marriage.
i do not think we need fear to do this. my own faith in monogamous marriage, as the most practical, the best, and the happiest form of union for the great majority of people, is so strongly rooted that i do not wish, because i hold it as unnecessary, to force any one either to enter into or to stay within its bonds. i want them to do this because[239] they themselves want to be bound. we get further and further away from real monogamy by allowing no other form of honourable partnerships.
under present economic conditions and the pressure of social opinion, the penalties that the woman has had to pay for any sexual relationship outside of marriage are very heavy. this is manifest. indeed, when we see the difficulties faced in these unions, that so many women do take the risks is another proof, if one were needed, of the elemental strength of the sex-passion in women. but mark this: it is only the woman whose social conscience is unawakened, or the few women strong enough and able to ignore the censure of their friends, who can enter into these irregular relationships—except in a hateful secrecy. and this has acted, as i believe, harmfully in a way not usually recognised, in so far as it has driven into marriage many who would have been better not to marry.
at present our monogamous marriage is buttressed with prostitution and maintained with the help of countless secret extra conjugal relationships, which thus makes our moral attitude one of intolerable deception. to this question i shall presently return.
under existing social conditions the opportunities for sexual relationships to meet the needs of those women and men unable, or not desiring, to marry must, in almost all cases, entail the sacrifice of the woman. it is an unsocial, because an ostracised union. our efforts at reform have so far been not only ineffective, but absurd. it is no use shirking it, if some change cannot be made, then we must accept prostitution and wild-love as well as the degradation of all the more honourable partnerships entered into outside of marriage.
[240]
i believe that many of these problems of our sexual life must remain unsolved; some of them, perhaps, are unsolvable, but certain of the evils are preventable. and first note this: there is one rule that is able and ought to guide us. i have asserted elsewhere,[85] what again i would affirm here: it is an essential fact of sexual morality, as i conceive it, that in any relation between the two sexes—i care not whether the association be legal or illegal—the position of the woman as the mother must be made secure. the immoral union is the union which results in bad and irresponsible parenthood.
it is because i believe this, that i wish to see saner, more practical, and more moral relations made possible between those women and men who live together but do not marry.
but before i attempt the difficult task of suggesting what seems to me the way in which better conditions could be established, it will be necessary to note briefly a few facts concerning changes actually taking place in the position of women, which it seems to me must be certain to affect profoundly the conditions of marriage and the problem we are considering.
the quite new importance as workers which women have now obtained will react inevitably on the relations between the sexes. in every sort of occupation, in clerking, shop-assisting, railway work, motor driving and conducting, police work, in labour on the land and in many more unusual capacities, they are being found efficient beyond precedent. and in the munition factories, in the handling of heavy and intricate machinery, their adaptability and inventiveness, as well as their steadfastness and enthusiasm, have surprised all those who are without knowledge of the[241] bewildering resourcefulness of the feminine character. all the disengaged energy of women has been employed. they have gained a strong position in the economic world. this is evident, but what is not realised are the forces working beneath.
what is going to be the permanent result? will all this energy evaporate after the war, will it be reabsorbed in the home and work directly connected therewith, or will this great force of women’s work be still used in industrial and other employments? it is not easy to give a certain answer.
leaving aside the question whether such work if permanently continued will be good or bad for women, a matter on which already i have expressed my opinion strongly,[86] i want to consider how these fresh and advantageous labour conditions have affected, and will, i think, go on affecting, women’s own desires. the question is whether this change that war conditions have brought is one which the desires of women cause them to welcome, or whether it is an arrangement that has arisen out of necessity to which they are essentially antagonistic.
what, in my opinion, makes the present situation dangerous is, that long before the war women were forcing an entrance into the world of labour, and struggling in competition with men to gain the positions which now are being thrust upon them. and i do not believe that in the mass to-day they are doing their work temporarily and to replace men for the period of the war, but rather they are aiming to establish their own economic emancipation. probably of the million women[87] who have plunged into[242] new work in connection with the war, the great majority are much better off economically than ever they were in times of peace. war has brought more of gain than of sacrifice. the new thing is the opportunity that has come. individually women were adventurous before the war; they have now become adventurous as a class. war has but accentuated and made obvious the change that for long had been taking place in the desires of women. this turning away from themselves, from their own lives and duties, to the world and employments and duties of men, is a thing that was going on before the war, slowly and against much prejudice, but what matters is that it was going on.
i shall make no attempt to deal with the serious economic results that are likely to occur should women, when the war is ended, struggle to compete with men in the labour market. the disasters that would follow such action are sufficiently plain. one result would certainly be a clash of sex, unavoidable in a work-struggle for the upper hand between women and men. the great temptation to women then will be to keep their positions by accepting lower wages than the men can take. no one can know whether they will do this.
there can be no question that the situation will be difficult. for the return of women to the home and what hitherto has been considered exclusively feminine work is going to mean much more than a change of occupation; it will be going back to the insistent duties of the narrowed woman’s sphere with new ideas and a fresh command of life. it is useless pretending that this can be easy. for one thing, the great uplift in women’s wages has given girls as well as women an independence, with a quite[243] strange joy as spenders which they have not known before.
and this new power in industry has been associated also with many women with a new power in the home. the withdrawal to the war of the men of the family has left women with an opportunity to spend incomes over which hitherto they had no direct control. so that sometimes one wonders whether men will be allowed to re-enter their homes, if they come back, on the same terms as before they held. will women again accept with contentment a position of economic dependence? this cannot fail, i think, to act directly on the conditions of marriage. the question would seem to be this: will women come back to the home believing the home to be the central interest of their lives? will they feel that motherhood, with the care of the little child and all the duties it should entail, is the ultimate joy, for the denial of which no personal freedom or success in work can compensate?
it is one of the unhappy features of our present condition of necessity for women to carry on the work of this country that the most deep and far-reaching issues are being decided in haste, and in many cases by young girls who have never been taught by any wise training to realise their own nature as women, or to understand their sexual needs with their immense restricting power. and my fear is that the things which matter most to life will be lost. i feel that almost everything in the future depends on the inner attitude of the thousands and thousands of girls and young women who to-day have gone out of the home. i wish i had the gift to make them feel the far-acting importance of their personal attitude. the root of all action is the will or desire. yes, that is the danger.[244] our desires are the greatest realities that we have, and we should look closely to the direction towards which they are turned. nothing but the strongest desire on the part of women will save the home. many forces will be acting to make permanent conditions that cannot fail to act adversely to any right ideal of home life. my hope is that women in the mass will understand in time and resist these forces. yet, i do not know, and sometimes my fear is more active than my hope.
at least, it is evident that in the immediate future the home is not going to be re-established without effort. women will have to make great sacrifice to surrender in every direction the new power of controlling and spending money which now they are enjoying. and for this reason, even if for no other, many women almost certainly will seek to hold their places in the labour world and keep on working for themselves. therefore, it is, i think, safe to expect that to some limited extent the present extension of women’s employment outside the home will be permanent when peace is established.
certainly it is unnecessary for me to say, after what i have written in the earlier chapters of my book, how exceedingly i regret the permanence of conditions that can seem good only in an industrial society. in my opinion the working of women will be the greatest of the many disasters that are likely to follow and remain from the war. i wish i had the power to prevent it. i do not, however, see any way in which this can be done. for one thing, if the desires of women are being set in a direction away from the home, this, as i have just said, must count as the strongest factor of all. what women want to do is what they are likely in the end to do.
[245]
so many women have been for long, and still are, suffering from the delusion that conditions which industrialism, with all its failures in the art of life, first established, and which war now has made necessary, are an advantage to be maintained after the need of war has made them unnecessary. this is the great mistake. i would emphasise again what i have shown in an earlier chapter,[88] that conditions which act against the home and marriage (always dependent on the individual home) are sure proof of social instability. such conditions are centuries old; all this flood of change is bringing nothing that is new. in all periods of unsettled life the individual home and the family have been threatened. the primitive form of marriage, the maternal form, where the husband visited the wife in her own home, is very near to the most modern suggestions for the readjustment of marriage. and the heavy working of women is a further sign of disturbance and of primitive conditions of life. it is a step backward, not a step forward. few women, however, realise that this is so. perhaps this explains why so many among them are talking and behaving to-day as if no more babies were desired to be born.
how far this will be carried i do not profess to say. women will have a fresh power to refuse the position of wife and mother; thus it seems likely that there may be an increased option against marriage in its true and binding form. and closely connected with the independent position of women will be the great shortage, for the next decade, of marriageable men, due to the killing and disablements of war. it will be a world in which the proportion of women will be very high. and although it would[246] be folly to estimate precisely how this great numerical strength of one sex will act, whether it will strengthen women’s position, or, as it equally well may, will lessen their importance in a society crowded with unwanted women, it is plain that it must directly affect the sexual relationships. women, accustomed when young to control their own lives and able to be self-supporting, will not only find it much more difficult to marry, but they will be in a position to get along economically without marriage. to every married woman there are likely to be three or four unmarried ones.[89] it will also probably be a period of poverty. the economic stress which war causes will almost necessarily continue in the years when we shall all be compelled to meet the huge task of national recovery that peace must bring. it is possible that for some years it will be more difficult to maintain a family than it has ever been before. this will be a third factor acting against marriage, and tending to maintain as permanent the class of energetic, not strongly maternal and undomesticated women workers.[90]
in different directions also causes very much the same may possibly be acting to the same end. the desires of men as well as the desires of women may be affected, and be turned from marriage and the duties of the family and the home. many men will not come back out of the hell of war the same men that entered it. it may not be easy to[247] plan life on the old rules, the safe customs of civilisation may well count for less. some men will not want to return to the posts kept open for them by women; to sell tablecloths to fussy women, or to spend dull days in offices adding columns of figures and addressing envelopes, may not appear “a man’s job” to men who have met the stark facts of death and life. i doubt the zeal of the response of all these men to the binding ties of family life. and in this way, it may be, that many fathers will be cut off from the family and turned away from desiring the sacrifice and duties that children entail, which cannot fail to act as a further force in modifying marriage.
if we try to take an entirely practical view of the position, certain grave facts must, i think, become evident. for side by side with these forces acting against marriage, and the parental sacrifice necessary to maintain the ideal of the family, must be placed the nation’s increased need for children—in particular for male children. the repair of the war drain on the world’s manhood must fall heaviest on women. it is woman who has borne and bred and loved each life that has been lost by war. it is she who will have to make good the waste. this is her bill of compulsory service.
never will child life have been so precious as it will be after this world war. already in this country we are beginning to recognise this need. excellent work for the restriction of infant mortality and the protection of child life is beginning to be undertaken, and these questions are receiving a practical recognition which they never gained in the days of peace. but much more drastic action than has as yet been considered will be needed. it is certainly not inconceivable that this need for children may lead to[248] changes both in our public and private attitudes to many sexual questions. i am hopeful that it may force us to face squarely many problems that hitherto we have turned from in fear.
speculations on all matters connected with marriage and the relations between the sexes are so hazardous that they are likely to be wrong. i do, however, think that, having regard to the direction in which so many forces are acting, the position in regard to the special problem we are considering has become clearer. monogamous marriage and the home based upon maternity and offspring has got to be saved. and in my opinion this will be done most surely by a frank acceptance, under the almost certain conditions of the future, of more than one form of sexual association.
this proposal is not made lightly. i am not advocating such a course as being in itself desirable or undesirable. i am attempting merely to estimate the drift and tendency of the times, considering those forces that were beginning to act before the war and, as i think, must continue, even with greater power, after the war. i suggest, therefore, the one course that seems to me can in any practical way help us to be more moral. all the facts that we have found work out to force us to the realisation that an increasing number of women will not be able, and probably will not desire, even if they marry, to bear children. now, i do not believe in changing the ideal of marriage so that its duties no longer bind women to their children and to the home. i think it better to make provision for other partnerships, to meet the sex-needs (for we can cause nothing but evil by failing to meet them) of the women and men who are not able or do not desire to enter the holy bonds of marriage[249] and undertake together the duties and sacrifice inevitable to the founding and maintenance of a family.
i know the whole question is a very difficult one. let me try to make my position somewhat clearer.
i am in one way in agreement with roman catholic christianity (i use the phrase to make my meaning plain, and ask indulgence if to any one it seems in itself indefensible). the roman catholic church admits the need of two standards of sexual conduct—some women and men are fitted for a religious life and should bind themselves to celibacy; others need to marry, and to them marriage is permitted. the difference between my view and the one just expressed is that, whereas it is usual to suppose the morals of the celibate monk or nun superior to those of the married man or woman, i should hold the opposite opinion; it is the highest types of men and women who would seek to marry and be best and happiest if living together as faithful man and wife, as devoted father and mother. i do, however, hold that there are others—women as well as men—without the gifts that make for successful parenthood or happy permanent marriage. i would recognise the divergence of these two roughly defined classes and let those who cannot marry be openly permitted to live together in temporary childless unions, destined, i hope, to show to the world the inferiority of every type of ideal of the sex relationships other than the monogamous union, which fulfils the completion of the woman and the man in the child created by their love. and further, these sterile unions would, by their childlessness, act to remove for ever from the world those unsuited to be parents. it is this last result that matters most. as long as we force those unsuited for faithful mating into marriage and hold them[250] bound against their desire, children will be born who must pay the penalty in weakness of character of their parents’ sins against love.
i believe if there were some open recognition of honourable partnerships outside of marriage, not necessarily permanent, with proper provision for the future, guarding the woman, who, in my opinion, should be in all cases protected, a provision not dependent on the generosity of the man and made after the love which sanctioned the union has waned, but decided upon by the man and the woman in the form of a contract before the relationship was entered upon, then there would be many women ready to undertake such unions gladly; there would be women as well as men who, i believe, would prefer them to monogamous marriage that binds them permanently to one partner for life. in this way many marriages would be prevented that inevitably come to disaster. and this would leave greater chances of marriage and child-bearing for other and more suitable types.
it is also possible that such friendship-contracts might, under present disastrous conditions, be made by those who are unsuitably mated and yet are unable, or do not wish, to sever the bond between them, with some other partner they could love. such contracts would open up possibilities of honourable partnerships to many who must otherwise suffer from enforced sexual abstinence or be driven into shameful and secret unions.
by this means a solution might be found for conditions of dishonour in our midst that we all know to be there—dishonour that, as far as i am able to see, is likely to be increased, and not lessened, in the near future by the conditions left by war. moreover, prostitution, and also the[251] diseases so closely connected with prostitution, would be greatly lessened, though i do not think that sexual sins would cease. there will always be for a very long time men and women who will be attracted to wild-love. this we have to recognise. men would not, however, be driven to buy sexual relief.[91]
we have got, i am certain, to recognise that our form of permanent marriage—the monogamous union—cannot meet the sex-needs of all people. to assert that it can do this is to close our eyes to the facts we all know to exist. the extending of the opportunities of honourable love must be faced before we can hope for more moral conditions in marriage. i must affirm again how necessary, in my opinion, is some kind of fixed public recognition for every form of sexual relationship between a man and a woman, so that there may be some accepted standard of conduct for the partners entering into them.
may not something be done now, when we are being forced to consider these questions, to make some such recognition possible? partnerships other than marriage have had a place as a recognised and guarded institution in many older and more primitive societies, and it may be, as i have tried to show, that the conditions brought upon us after the world war may act in forcing upon us a similar acceptance.
i believe that, in face of the many past disorders in our[252] sexual conduct, such a change would work for good and not for evil; that it would not destroy marriage, but might re-establish its sanctity.
the whole question of any sexual relationships outside of marriage in the past has been left in the gutter, so to speak, in darkness and concealment. this would be changed. it is the results that have almost always followed these irregular unions that have branded them as anti-social acts. but the desertion of women, which has arisen from the conditions of secrecy under which they now exist, would be put to an end. one reason why extra conjugal relationships are discredited is because the difficulties placed around them are so numerous that, as a rule, only the weak, the foolish, and the irresponsible undertake these partnerships. make these partnerships honourable and honourable men and women will enter into them. i do not see how we can forbid or treat with bitterness any union that is openly entered into and in which the duties undertaken are faithfully fulfilled. it is our attitude of blame that has made this impossible.
i can anticipate an objection that will probably be raised. why, i shall be asked, if sexual relationships are to be acknowledged outside of marriage, preserve marriage at all? i have answered this question sufficiently. monogamous marriage will be maintained because the great majority of women and men want it to be maintained. i have affirmed before my own belief in the monogamic union: the ideal marriage is that of the man and woman who have dedicated themselves to each other for the life of both, faithfully together to fulfil the duties of family life. this is the true monogamy; this is the marriage which i regard as sanctified. but i, regarding it as a holy[253] state, would preserve it for those suited for the binding duties of the individual home so intimately connected with it.
and i do disavow the sanctity of many professedly monogamous marriages that are maintained only with the support of prostitution and clandestine loves. squalid intrigues have been the shadow of the old, narrow moral code. the contract-partnerships i have suggested will do nothing to change the sanctity of any true marriages. and the answer i would give to those who fear an increase of immorality from any openly recognised provision for sexual partnerships outside of permanent marriage is, that no deliberate change made in the future in our sexual conduct can conceivably make moral conditions worse than they have been in the recent past. as a matter of fact, every form of irregular union has existed and does exist to-day, but shamefully and hidden. it is certain that they will continue, and that their number will be increased.
i have sought to put these matters as plainly as may be in the conviction that nothing can be gained by concealment. any one who writes on the subject of marriage reform is very open to misconception. it is not realised that the effort of the reformer is not to diminish at all the bonds in any sexual partnerships, rather the desire is to strengthen them, but the forms of the partnership will have to be more varied, unless, indeed, we prefer to accept unregulated and secret vice. matters are likely to get worse and not better. we shall, i do most sincerely believe, gain more morality by doing what i am pleading for than will be gained in any other way.
the only logical objection that i can think of being advanced against an honourable recognition of these partnerships[254] is that, by doing away with all necessity for concealments, their number is likely to be larger than if the old penalties were maintained. this is undoubtedly true; it is also true that recognition is the only possible way by which such unions can cease to be shameful. prohibition and laws, however stringent, can do nothing. the past has proved their failure; they will fail still worse in the future.
nor is the change really so great or so startling as at first it may appear to be. our marriage in its present form is primarily an arrangement for the protection of the woman and the family. what i want is that some measure, at least, of the protection now given to the legal wife, should also be afforded to all women who in an open and honourable way fulfil any of the same duties. i am not seeking to make immorality easier, that is very far indeed from my purpose. these changes for which i am pleading will make immorality much harder, for it will not be so easy as now it is to escape from the responsibilities of love.
no one can suppose, of course, that these changes can be other than gradual. there will be no stage at which a large section of society will give up the accepted convention of concealments with regard to unregulated unions, and will stand perplexed as to how they may readjust their opinion and moral judgments on this question. what will happen is this. the slow abandonment by society of the old attitude of blame and fear, as experiments in sexual partnership are made, at first by the few, to be followed by an ever increasing number. when the need for change arises, then does a change come.
