Let us look at the matter a little closer and with greater truth. In marriage the woman dominates more often than usually is known. She has the children on her side. Undeniably the greatest function of any man in the life of the average woman is to be the father of her child. All other things that he means to her are secondary to this. For this reason, after the birth of her children she frequently ceases physically to desire her husband. Thus the position arises that many husbands, after some years of marriage, find themselves in a condition of loneliness in their own homes. And the cleavage is wider than the physical needs, and extends to the mental and spiritual plains. The woman’s life is filled with her children; she ceases to belong to her husband as completely as he belongs to her. She holds back more and more of herself—the vital part that he wants. The man feels that he is losing, and, after some bluster and conflict, he begins not to care. This, I believe, is the history of many marriages that started with love. The result in the end is almost certain. The lower types of husband from time to time will break away and seek distraction in wild love. Other men of more refinement will suffer much more, till they seek to find love with some woman in a permanent union outside marriage. It may, and I expect will, be said that I am looking at this question from the man’s side only. This is not because I do not feel the woman’s position, but because the facts I am trying to state are so often neglected, in particular by women themselves. Women have been taught to believe, and do really feel, that by sexual unfaithfulness a husband does them the cruellest possible wrong that a man can do to a woman. But is the man ever wholly to be blamed? After all, he has given away only what his wife has shown him she does not want for herself. Most English wives always are acquiescent rather than passionate in the sexual embrace. Even when in love they are unresponsive, hiding what they feel, and rarely showing their husbands that they want them with any real desire. After a few years of marriage, his embraces are suffered as a duty. And here I would re-state an opinion given in an earlier chapter: I do hold that man is by his nature faithful. If he has once loved a woman, he does not cease to desire her until after she has ceased to desire him.