The Union of Three
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
In the early days of our modern civilization, that is to say within the
last couple of hundred years, the treatment of women in Western Europe
sank to a terribly low ebb. Although the last few years have done much
to restore woman to some of her ancient rights and privileges, there
are still among us a distressing proportion of ignorant, coarse and
consequently ruthless men who are not debarred from becoming husbands.
Such men have been in the past in the habit of “using their wives”
regardless of the desires or even the actual health requirements of
the unfortunate women who are tied to them, and such men have made a
practice of continuing to indulge in sex union even through the later
stages of pregnancy. I have heard from midwives, to my amazed horror,
that some such depraved men (not bestial, for no beast behaves in such
a way) have even used their wives while they are still in bed after
child birth. With such I have in this volume no concern beyond the
mention that they are loathsome.
Their existence, however, has had an effect on a better type and has
given rise to reaction on the part of men infinitely their superiors.
Women who have seen their sister women thus outraged have had the
support of men of sensitive conscience and consideration when they
have claimed that the mother who is carrying and nursing her child is
sacred, and must not be approached by her husband at all during the
whole of the child’s coming and nursing period. It has, therefore,
come about that a large number of our best and most high-minded women
(supported by correspondingly high-minded men, anxious to do the best
that is within their power for their wives and children) hold the view
that no sex union after the third month, or perhaps that no sex union
at all is allowable during pregnancy.
Now this is one more matter which has not begun to receive the
consideration which it deserves. When I wrote _Married Love_ I felt
that I was not entitled to decide on this subject, and I tried to hold
the balance between the various opinions, and drew attention to the
fact that the prospective mother of the lower creatures is always set
apart. This was apparently misinterpreted by some of my readers as
being a personal expression of opinion, and women wrote or spoke to
me about the subject saying they were sure I was right _because their
husbands held the same opinion as I did_, BUT _the women themselves
were ashamed, almost humiliated, to confess that during the carrying of
their child they most ardently desired unions_.
To these, as individuals, I pointed out that I was very far from
expressing a definite opinion in my book on this point, and that my
actual opinion indeed inclined towards thinking that restricted unions
should be advantageous. In a later edition (the 7th) of my book, I
enlarged on what I had to say on this subject, concluding: “There is
little doubt that in this particular, even more than in so many others,
the health, needs, and mental condition of women who are bearing
children vary profoundly.”
Through evidences from very various types of women in the last year or
two, I have now accumulated facts in sufficient numbers to begin to see
something approaching a possible generalization on this subject.
One of the most striking things I noticed concerning the evidences I
received was that the women who confessed to a desire for sex union
while they were carrying a child were, almost without exception, the
_best_ type. A hasty generalization would have predicted that those
very women with their pure attitude, their high degree of culture,
their intellectual attainments, and their gracious self-restraint in
outer life were just exactly those women who would maintain a fierce
chastity during the nine months. These quite remarkable corresponding
experiences of similarly superior women forced the matter vividly upon
my attention, and I am now prepared to make a tentative generalization,
coupled with the generalization to be found in Chapter XV.
The attitude of one of the women who confessed her intimate feelings
to me is typical of those of this type, and is illuminating. She is
a woman of unusually gifted brain, well endowed physically and a
normally healthy mother in every respect; she is noted for a peculiar
beauty and sweetness of disposition, and an unusually high degree of
sensitive appreciation of beauty and goodness. In conversation she
said to me: “You know I feel so ashamed and degraded by myself, but
just at the time when I felt I ought to be sacred from these things,
I more ardently desired my husband than I had done throughout all my
married life of fifteen years.” She then told me that her husband who
had been truly devoted to her all his life was particularly considerate
and thoughtful for her during her time of expectant motherhood, and
that when she tentatively hinted at her wish for union with him he
refused tenderly on the grounds that the higher standard for men was
to share, however difficult it was, in the nine months of complete
abstinence. He said that, for the sake of the child and herself, he
must refuse. Her desire, however, again recurred, much to her own shame
and mortification, because she felt that what her husband said really
represented the highest accepted standard of pre-natal conduct. Quite
a number of rather similar and also exceptionally endowed women have
confessed to me in almost the same terms the same feeling.
Before I indicate my conclusions, let us briefly consider some of the
surrounding circumstances of this problem. As I said in the opening
paragraphs of this chapter, the nobler and better men have been carried
away by a certain type of woman into thinking that it is man’s share
of the difficulties and self-sacrifice of parenthood that he should
entirely sacrifice what is spoken of as “his desires.” In my opinion,
this attitude involves two profound fallacies. The first fallacy is
that the act of sex union is to meet only “his desires”; it is not.
Completed union is something infinitely greater: it is a consummation
jointly achieved by both the man and his wife. This attitude I make
clear in my book, _Married Love_ and in my new _Gospel_ addressed to
the Bishops at Lambeth. And I must postulate in this, my present book,
the far reaching effects on the bodily, spiritual and mental health
of a man and woman concerned in this complex sex union. The truth is
that the husband who mutually and considerately unites with his wife
when she can accept him is not merely gratifying his own desire, he
is enriching her whole system as well as his own through this mutual
alchemy.
Before following up the logic of this paragraph, let us turn to the
woman and her needs. The drain on her system of providing for another
life out of her own tissues, and the substances which pass through her
own body, must be very severe unless she is amply provided with all the
subtle chemical compounds which are demanded of her. Now there is much
evidence that in unmarried women, and in young wives who are debarred
from sex union altogether, something approaching a subtle form of
starvation occurs; conversely that women absorb from the seminal fluid
of the man some substance, “hormone,” “vitamine” or stimulant which
affects their internal economy in such a way as to benefit and nourish
their whole systems. That semen is a stimulant to a woman was long
ago recognized as probable, and is now the opinion of several leading
doctors. Reference to this will be found in Havelock Ellis, vol. 5,
1912. See also the paper by Toff in the _Centralblatt Gynakologie_,
April, 1903. Incidentally the converse is true, and the man who
conducts himself properly during the sex union, and remains for long in
contact with his wife after the ejaculation is completed, also benefits
through actual absorption from his wife. For this I have the testimony
of a number of men.
If, therefore, the woman who is becoming a mother, and who is
supporting a second life, feels the need of union with her husband
it is, I maintain, an indication that her nature is calling out for
something not only legitimate but positively beneficial and required,
and that it should be not only a man’s privilege, but his delight, to
unite with his wife at such a time and under such circumstances.
The maintenance of the right balance of the internal secretions of the
various glands which re-act on sex activity is important to women at
all times, and particularly during the time when a woman is becoming a
mother. One of the results of the growth of the child is the increased
activity of the thyroid gland in the neck, which considerably increases
in size.
A general account of the relation of such glands to a woman’s mental
and physical balance is found in Blair Bell’s book (_The Sex Complex_,
1916), but he does not deal with the special aspect of a woman’s
requirements which forms the subject of this chapter.
There is, even with the type of woman who does feel the need of, and
ardently desires some sex unions with her husband during the long
months, almost always a space of time, perhaps as much as two or three
months consecutively, when she will have no such desires at all and
there are also times of special liability to lose the child through
premature birth, when unions should be avoided. Unexpected abortions
most usually take place at the dates around the time which would have
been a monthly period.
When I consider the evidence which I have before me, which is almost
exclusively from the very best type of women, and when I observe that
the most generally perfected, and finest women of my acquaintance,
and they in particular, desire occasional moderate intercourse during
pregnancy, I feel that one has a guide to what is best for the race.
In these women and the conduct which their needs inspire, we have an
indication of the truest and highest standard of all. The deviations
of conduct may at last return from both the grossness of abuse and the
reaction from it, and settle in the right and middle path. After the
excessively virtuous, and perhaps undersexed type of woman, in contrast
to the totally base attitude of the earlier and coarser type of man,
has made the thoughtful speed from baseness to an ascetic absence
of unions, we should be led back by these well developed and well
balanced and noble minded women to the right and middle way. In this
the spontaneous impulse of the responsible mother will be the guide for
her husband and will benefit all three concerned.
For, let us realize what a profound mystical symbol is enacted when
the union is not that of a single man and woman, but of that holy
trinity the father, the mother and the unborn child. _Only_ during
these brief sacred months can the three be united in such exquisite
intimacy, and during all these months when the child is forming, it
is only in the few infrequent embraces of subdued passion that the
husband and father-to-be can come truly close to his child, that he
can, through additions to her system from his own, assist the mother in
her otherwise solitary task of endowing it with everything its growth
demands.
Every woman who is bearing a child by a man whom she loves deeply,
longs intensely that its father should influence it as much as it is
possible for him to do: in this way _and in this way alone_ can he give
it of the actual substance of his body.
This view of mine, in the present crude state of scientific knowledge
must, of course, be stated as an hypothesis, but it will be proved
later on when science is sufficiently subtle to detect the actual
microscopic exchange of particles which takes place during proper and
prolonged physical contact in the sex union.
Light on my thesis is also shown by the converse: For instance, an
interesting suggestion was made by a distinguished medical specialist
as a result of his observation of two or three of his own patients,
where the prospective mother had desired unions and the husband had
denied them thinking it in her interest: the doctor observed that
the children seemed to grow up restless and uncontrollable, with a
marked tendency to self-abuse. To these two or three instances I have
added some which have come under my own observation and, although as
yet the evidence is insufficient to support a dogmatic attitude, I
incline to think that not only the deprivation of the mother of proper
union during pregnancy, but also the after effects of some years of
the use of _coitus interruptus_ tends to have a similar effect upon
later children. That is to say that mothers whose natural desire for
union has been denied, and mothers who are congenitally frigid rather
tend to produce children with unbalanced sex-feeling liable to yield
to self-abuse. Immoderate and excessive desire for sex union during
pregnancy so far as I am aware is rare, and where it occurs it should
of course be treated as an abnormality.
The mother of the higher type, such as I have indicated in the
paragraphs above who does desire unions, will probably only require
them infrequently during these months.
It should be obvious, but as the general public often lacks a
visualizing imagination, I ought to add, that for the proper
consummation of the act of union, particularly during the later months
of coming parenthood, the ordinary position with the man above the
woman is not suitable and may be harmful. The pair should either lie
side by side, or should lie so that they are almost at right angles
to each other, so that there is no pressure upon the woman. Or the
man should lie on his side behind the woman, which makes penetration
easy and safe and free from pressure. I might point out here a fact
which is of general importance in all true consummations of the sex
union, and that is that all the preliminaries and even the final act of
ejaculation itself do not constitute the whole of the truest union. A
truth on which I lay great stress, although I have not yet dealt with
it fully in any publications, is the fact that an _extremely_ important
phase of each union is the close and prolonged contact after the
culmination takes place. The benefit to both of the pair of remaining
in the closest possible physical contact for as long a time as is
possible after the crisis is almost incalculable.
A whole chapter could be written upon this theme, and indeed it should
be written. In the union during pregnancy, a woman is by nature
debarred from the complete and intense muscular orgasm and for her,
indeed, the union must essentially consist almost solely of the close
contact of skin with skin and of the absorption of molecular particles
as well as the resolution of nervous tension as the result of so close
and prolonged a contact.
Among the children known to me personally, several of the most
beautiful were the children of mothers and fathers who had unions
during the months of their development. The following quotation from a
young husband may be of interest in this connection:--
The day before the birth of our baby, we went for a six-mile walk
over country ground, and I slept with my wife the very night before
he was born.... We had unions, but not in the ordinary position;
she would be on her side with her back to me, and after union
would quietly go off to sleep in my arms, and in the morning would
wake with a joyful and passionate kiss. Now our baby is one of the
finest of babies from all points of view.
As I have seen photographs of the child, I can endorse the parent’s
opinions.
Tolstoy’s condemnation of any sex contact while the wife was pregnant
or nursing may have influenced some serious men, but, as in many other
respects, Tolstoy’s teaching is so widely contradictory, and depends so
much upon his own age and state at the time, one cannot but regret the
unbalanced influence his literary power has given him.
While this chapter may be taken as an indication that sex union is, in
my opinion, not only allowable but advisable for certain types during
the time they are carrying a child, nevertheless I do not wish it to
be misinterpreted in such a way that a single act of union which is
repugnant to the prospective mother should be urged upon her “for her
good.”
There is undoubtedly a large body of most excellent women who are as
individuals distinctly rather undersexed, but who are on the whole good
mothers, profoundly well meaning and right minded and virtuous women
to whom the time of prospective motherhood is an intensely individual
period, during which they feel an active repugnance to any sex union.
Women of this type are not able to give the _completest_ dower to
their children, but are immensely superior to the average and baser
type which forms the majority. If such women do not spontaneously
desire unions they should be left unharried by any suggestion that they
would benefit by them, and the husbands of such women should, in their
own interests, curb any natural impulses which may conflict with the
intense feeling of the wife. Husbands, however, should also be aware
that such women generally feel as they do because they have never been
_wooed_ with sufficient grace and tenderness.
To sum up, I am convinced that unless there is any indication of a
disease or abnormal appetite in any respect, that the natural wishes
and desires of the mother-to-be who is bearing a child should be the
absolute law to herself and her husband, for during these months
she is on a different plane of existence from the usual one. She is
swayed by impulses which science is as yet incapable of analysing or
comprehending, and experience has again and again proved that she is
wise to satisfy any reasonable desire, whether for the spiritual,
bodily or mental contributions to her growing child’s requirements or
those which would strengthen her own power of supporting that child.
Fortunate indeed is the husband of the best, well-balanced and
developed mother-to-be, who with intense emotion shares with him in the
closest and most exquisite intimacy, the creating of a life which has
every prospect of adding beauty and strength to the world.