Besides retaining or regaining their fetishes, human beings should make a special effort not to let those fetishes lose their power.
=The Worst Foe of Married Happiness.= Balzac in his "Physiology of Marriage" says that the married have to wage a constant fight with a monster which devours everything: Habit. Every stimulus, as we know, pleasant or unpleasant, loses its power when applied continuously or too frequently.
It is only for the first minute or so that the ice cold shower causes our naked skin to tingle with excitement. As soon as the reaction sets in and the capillaries fill with red blood, the pleasant sensation of the water needles becomes dulled.
After holding our hand for a minute in hot water, we no longer realise the high temperature of the liquid and in order to continue to experience the feeling of heat we must continually raise the temperature of the water.
And likewise we may grow so accustomed to one source of erotic stimulation that we become indifferent to it.
=Friendship May Survive the Death of Sexual Love=, provided the sex desire has died in both mates at the same time. When desire dies off in the wife first and is not replaced by aversion, the situation may be very simple for she can still satisfy her more ardent mate and derive some gratification therefrom.
When the man's desire dies first, on the other hand, there may arise unpleasant complications. A man may be impotent with a woman whom he loves tenderly but no longer desires sexually and yet be potent with some other woman to whom he is not completely "accustomed."
Jealousy on the part of the wife may then prevent the advent of the platonic friendship which is not uncommon between old married mates, altho Montaigne denies the possibility of its existence.
Modern mates, conscious of that danger, have now and then devised ways and means to combat Balzac's monster.
Not so long ago a well-known woman writer announced that she was planning to marry a certain man with whom, however, she did not intend to live day after day. The experiment has many chances of success if jealousy does not complicate the situation.
I suggested to reporters last summer, when two famous artists parted company, that their union might have been of longer duration if one of them had lived at the Plaza while the other was stopping at the St. Regis.