SEXUAL ADJUSTMENT IN MARRIAGE
DESPITE MARRIAGE manuals, the Kinsey and other reports, and
the so called sexual revolution, medical authorities estimate that at least
half of all married couples today still suffer from serious sexual problems.
How unfortunate it is that the sex act, with its potential of deep and
rewarding intimacy, should be clouded by fear, shame, ignorance, and
misconceptions. Perhaps some sexual anthropologist of a future century, upon
analyzing the Pill, the drive-in, the works of some of our best-selling
novelists, the Tween Bra, and all the myriad other artifacts of the Great
Sexual Revolution, will conclude that ours may have been an era in which there
was some change in morality but not necessarily in sexual enlightenment and
fulfillment.
Parents may think that young people today know as much as,
if not more than, they should about sex; and many young people may smile in
superior manner at any notion that they need education in such matters. Yet
from the questions still asked by newly married couples, as well as by
long-married ones, physicians are aware that much ignorance and misinformation
remain. Both young and old couples often ask whether their sexual relations
are" all right." They would like to have the boundaries of normal
relationships defined, and they are concerned with problems of frigidity and
impotence. It is a good thing that questions is being asked, that hopefully
fewer couples refuse to discuss sex matters.
Yet there remain many people who believe that to put any
significant emphasis on sex education is a mistake. They muster many arguments,
even such as the one of a young married woman who declared: "I'm sorry
Bill and I ever read that book about sex in marriage. It just made him feel
guilty because he can't live up to what it says a man should do to satisfy. It
is true that some books dealing with sex education have been written in a way
that tends to remove all spontaneity from the relationship. Because matters of sex
technique and skill were so, some writers have gone to the other extreme, exaggerating
their importance and neglecting other aspects.
Yet physical attraction and intuition are not enough to
enable people to solve the problems that may give rise to, or result from, an
unsatisfactory sexual relationship. Neither rules nor elaborate detailing of
techniques can solve such problems; only a better understanding of sex in all
its aspects may do that.
