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But in general it will be admitted that the husband cannot rightly seek for himself the type of erotic reaction which is proper and peculiar to his wife; though it must be confessed that the suggestions operative even in the average married love episode are strongly that way. The husband hears the ecstatic responses of his wife and her repeated inquiries as to his own pleasurable sensations, and the whole situation is such as to suggest to him that he identify in every respect his own feelings with hers.

But to do so is in no degree to make for true mutuality. His own feelings should not be the utter surrender and abandon to physical and mental bliss which he sees so profoundly moving to his partner. His feeling should be a pervading sense of triumph and accomplishment, no less profound for being embedded in sensual gratification. The truth is that biologically the wife has no positive accomplishment to perform in the love episode; for the only accomplishment of which she is capable is the utter dissolution, temporary though it be, of the personality of her husband. If she succeeds, she is in the position of one who, not knowing, should try, by applying a match, to see whether or not gunpowder is inflammable. It is, and she is carefully kept in ignorance of the fact, but plentifully supplied with matches.