Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXbefore the proposed marriage is made known to any widecircle of friends. It must of course include gynecologicalexamination of the woman and genito-urinary examinationof the man. It has been argued that such certificatesshould be compulsory and some attempts have been madein that direction. But such an examination is so highlydesirable for the welfare of both parties, even apart fromall eugenic considerations with which we are not hereprimarily concerned, that no couple proposing to marryshould wait for compulsion.There is another kind of preparation for marriage, ofan even more essential nature, which can only be madeThat is an examina-by the couple themselves in private.tion into their own knowledge and feelings with regardto the intimate relationship they are proposing to initiate.What does each know about the anatomy and physiologyof the other's body, and his or her own, and what aretheir emotional reactions to these matters? It has too oftenhappened that, as Dickinson and Lura Beam put it,"theyoung husband finds her 'too sacred* to consider her innermechanism, or the wife thinks of herself as a tree witha solid trunk. The knowledge of anatomy of some of themiscomparable with that of the early Persians." What,above all, are their feelings about intimacy in marriedlove? There are husbands as well as wives who dread anyprivate touch; there are husbands and wives who havenever been in the bath-room together, because of someterror either on his part or on hers. But there can neverbe any real confidence and trust, never any real marriageunion, without the possibility of a complete intimacy welcometo both. As Katharine Davis found, the percentageof happy marriages among women who were, in one wayor another adequately prepared, was very much largerthan among those who were not thus prepared.[*7]