These “little beaux” or “playmates” are an indication of the essential childishness of the marriage relation where they play a part, and the position of the husband whose wife needs such amusement is an exceedingly unenviable one, no matter how purely Platonic the relation may be between his wife and her playmate. § 13 It will be consistently maintained in this book that the need of such Platonic friendships on the part of these numerous wives is a reflection on the lack of skill with which the husband handles the erotic situation. He may not be, often, indeed, is not, in the least to blame for his lack of skill, or for the discontent of his wife that causes her to give expression to the play side of love, or, even a part of it, in this taking of a playmate. It is a situation which practically calls the husband a workmate, or dutymate—a situation that is fundamentally deplorable and constitutes in fact the first step in the direction of divorce. The playmates provide a large amount of innocent amusement, which the husbands do not or cannot find time possibly to furnish themselves. With the playmates the wives go to lunches, dances, theatres, concerts, and talk poetry, art, music—and love. All the evidence points to the fact that these wives are not properly mated. It is not their fault. It is their husbands’, yet, because of the husbands’ ignorance of the love needs of women, the husbands are not to blame, at any rate until they have taken to heart the message which this book attempts to convey. Possibly the wives themselves, after thinking the matter over in the light of what they may read in this book, might talk to their husbands about love now as perhaps once they did, and get them to realize what they are failing to do. Seeking intellectual stimulation from a playmate whose tenure of office is permanent or nearly so is, as psychoanalysis has amply demonstrated, a substitute or vicariate for sex. The women are, but of course unconsciously, wishing for more extended and more intimate love episodes with their playmates. In short, restlessness of wives is an expression of the exclusively economic trend of present-day civilization which makes a machine or an office organization or a financial manipulation a substitute, in the mind of the husband, for love. Such a man is most likely to take his business home with him, where indeed business has no place—even, indeed, take it to bed with him. § 14 The writer is aware of the unprecedented character of much that has just been said, but feels that he knows whereof he speaks, also of the revolutionary nature of the theses of the rest of this chapter in which the subsequent matter of the book is given in outline.