This ideal is not realized largely because no ideal is. How often is it closely approximated? Experience says seldom. That implies no reproach against marriage, for we are to judge marriage by the rest of life and not by an ideal. A world in which great wars occur frequently, in which economic conflict is constant, in which sickness and disaster are never absent; where education is occasional, where reason has yet to rule in the larger policies and where folly occupies the high places,--why expect marriage to be more nearly perfect than the life of which it is a part? To be reasonably comfortable and happy in marriage is all we may expect.
What are the difficulties confronting the partners which impede happiness and especially which bring the neurosis of the housewife? For after all we can only examine the field for our own purpose.
We may divide the difficulties as follows from the standpoint of the neurosis of the housewife:
1. Those that arise from the sex relationship itself.
2. Those that arise from conflicts of will, purpose, ideas.
3. Those that arise from the types of husbands.
4. Those that arise from the types of wives. (This has already been considered under the heading Types Predisposed to the Neurosis.)
Before we go on to the consideration of these various factors we must repeat what has been emphasized frequently in this book.
That the change in the status of woman implies difficulty in the marriage relationship. If only _one_ will is expected to be dominant in the household, the man's, then there can arise no conflict. If the form of the household is unaltered, but if the woman demands its control or expects equality, then conflict arises. If a woman expects a man to beat her at his pleasure, as has everywhere been the case and still is in some places, if she considers it just, brutality exists only in extremes of violence. If she considers a blow, or even a rough word, an unendurable insult, then brutality arises with the commonest disagreement. In other words, it is comparatively easy to deal with a woman expecting an inferior position, whose individual tastes, wills, ideas, and ideals have never been developed,--the ancient woman; it is very much more difficult to deal with her modern sister.