The qualities instinctively called for in the woman by the man are the opposite in some respects. He unconsciously, if not consciously, expects sweetness, docility, compliance, adoration in his wife, all qualities that are a necessary background and basis for his childish and autoerotic enjoyments. It is almost unheard of to find a man who takes pleasure in the negativism which characterizes the child and also many women, and in the opposition which alone, when deftly overcome, constitutes the only proof that he is or has been purely masculine and creative in his positive activities in effecting a change in that part of his environment. It may be objected that this demand for compliance, softness and accessibility in woman may not be purely instinctive; but, if it is not, it is of such early origin as to be undistinguishable from true instinct. It is the common experience of every infant to be treated with the utmost tenderness by its mother. § 60 When the average unreflective man meets opposition, in any degree of strength, from his wife he tends to reënact the mother-infant situation in his own married life. This results in the husband’s reproducing more or less exactly the original infantile tantrum. Naturally he tends toward an explosive use of force when he does not find in his wife the qualities he has sensed in his mother. However much he may conceal or transform the outward manifestation of this infantile trend, the trend exists and is a positive factor in the situation which contains the wife’s opposition. From this it follows that instinct is a better guide for women than for men. Woman is in every way justified in her demand for strength in her mate. Man is wholly unjustified in expecting sweetness, adoration and the other qualities except perhaps the docility implied in the susceptibility to male control in the erotic sphere which is undoubtedly innate in every woman. It does not occur to him that the negativistic opposition of woman is her means of testing his own strength, and that he has in it the best possibility of proving his essential masculinity. That he should totally ignore the opposition by the sole means of suggestive replacement of her antagonistic ideas by the ideas which he knows are the best ones in the situation, and that he should convince and persuade her through his perfectly confident attitude that this type of action on his part is exactly what she is instinctively trying to evoke in him by her apparent perversity, are too infrequently even glimpsed by the man who relies on _his_ instinct. § 61