On the one hand, he may treat his bride
as a prostitute, or as a novice to be speedily moulded into the sexual
shape he is most accustomed to, thus running the risk either of perverting
or of disgusting her. On the other hand, realizing that the purity and
dignity of his bride place her in an altogether different class from the
women he has previously known, he may go to the opposite extreme of
treating her with an exaggerated respect, and so fail either to arouse or
to gratify her erotic needs. It is difficult to say which of these two
courses of action is the more unfortunate; the result of both, however, is
frequently found to be that a nominal marriage never becomes a real
marriage.[385]

Yet there can be no doubt whatever that the other group of men, the men
who enter marriage without any erotic experiences, run even greater risks.
These are often the best of men, both as regards personal character and
mental power. It is indeed astonishing to find how ignorant, both
practically and theoretically, very able and highly educated men may be
concerning sexual matters.

"Complete abstinence during youth," says Freud (_Sexual-Probleme_,
March, 1908), "is not the best preparation for marriage in
a young man. Women divine this and prefer those of their
wooers who have already proved themselves to be men with
other women." Ellen Key, referring to the demand sometimes made
by women for purity in men (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 96), asks
whether women realize the effect of their admiration of the
experienced and confident man who knows women, on the shy and
hesitating youth, "who perhaps has been struggling hard for his
erotic purity, in the hope that a woman's happy smile will be the
reward of his conquest, and who is condemned to see how that
woman looks down on him with lofty compassion and gazes with
admiration at the leopard's spots." When the lover, in Laura
Marholm's _Was war es_? says to the heroine, "I have never yet
touched a woman," the girl "turns from him with horror, and it
seemed to her that a cold shudder went through her, a chilling
deception." The same feeling is manifested in an exaggerated form
in the passion often experienced by vigorous girls of eighteen to
twenty-four for old roues. (This has been discussed by Forel,
_Die Sexuelle Frage_, pp. 217 et seq.)

Other factors may enter in a woman's preference for the man who