The married pair can be too sexual in the strictly physical sense, they can leave undeveloped the more complicated organism of psychic erotism—but they cannot be too erotic in the sense in which I have used this term, for erotism, in the sense I use it, is psychically controlled sex, controlled not as in the majority of cases, by repression and inhibition, but by rational modes of expression. § 110 Modern science shows, and clearly, why it must be so, that man’s emotional tensions are never to be relaxed in the presence of a woman herself tense. This applies in every other situation in life, as well as in the distinctively erotic. A man’s emotional tensions are not to be relaxed on a woman, but on a relaxed woman. In every sphere of life the mother[23] is always a relaxed woman to her son, particularly in his childhood, but is never a relaxed woman to her husband, except at her consummation in the erotic episode. If the husband is unwilling, or unprepared to accept these conditions of marriage, he is marrying a woman to be a mother to him, instead of a wife, and he is completely deluding both himself and her. If he is unwilling or unprepared to accept these conditions of marriage, he needs to wait till he is willing or he needs to be prepared. This may sound, to some men, like giving entirely and not getting anything in return. But they must realize that getting the response they biologically need themselves, and consciously desire, if they be above the animal level, is a process of constructive giving. So much of their attention husbands must give in order to get what few really get—the total response in every fibre of their wives’ life-love. They cannot get anything by merely taking. Things merely taken turn to dust in their hands. What they want to get must be lured forth from the unconscious depths of their wives and must, to the wife, seem uncaused, spontaneous, no matter how much the husband knows he has practised art. § 111 Much has been said not only in this book but in others about simultaneity of the erotic acme in husband and wife. Gallichan in his _Psychology of Marriage_ (p. 107), speaking of women, says: “It should be known that the imperfect fulfillment of the marital act, unaccompanied by the normal, healthy gratification decreed by Nature with infinite care, has a more or less injurious effect upon the psychic-emotional being and may affect the bodily functions.... The husband who does not experience this emotion is either not the proper spouse for his partner, or some necessary element of reciprocal love is wanting or amiss. If there is any human act that should be perfectly mutual, it is this. When passion is shared alike, Nature approves and blesses the conjunction.” From that it may be inferred that the author quoted advocates simultaneity of the erotic acme in husband and wife.