is nearly dead that woman is a passionless creature, who will never
actively desire her husband but who ought to be willing to receive him
whenever he desires. Happy marriages can only be built upon the grave
of that misconception. It was held to be a view honoring to women. As a
matter of fact it led to a great deal of cruelty. No doubt women differ
greatly, but in every woman who truly loves there lies dormant the
capacity to become vibrantly alive in response to her lover, and to
meet him as a willing and active participant in the sacrament of
marriage. And till that dormant capacity has been stirred into life
sexual intimacy may be actually repulsive, with the result that
children may be born who are not in the full sense the product of
creative love, and that the relations of husband and wife may remain
difficult and unsatisfying to both.

This is not what God ordained. There is an art of wooing which Nature
teaches to many men, and would, I think, teach to all men if they were
patient and willing to learn. It consists in a love-making that appeals
to the mind, the heart, and ultimately the body, and through it alone
can a woman be attuned for her natural part in marriage. It is her
inalienable right thus to be wooed before sexual intimacy is asked for,
and husbands who are too impatient to offer such wooing do her a real
wrong.

There are times when a woman cannot respond, and a true husband must
learn to recognize such times. Some of them are perfectly obvious. When
a woman is not well, or is fatigued--when pregnancy has advanced beyond
its early stages--when full health has not been recovered after
childbirth--at these and at other times the conditions are not present
for a true sexual experience, and in the name of his love a man must
learn not to ask for what cannot be freely given.