As she reaps the rewards of her new capacity to give of herself unstintingly and fearlessly to her husband and her children, the very appearance of a woman often begins to change. Drawn expressions relax, anxious forehead wrinkles disappear, thin-lipped mouths soften. Indeed, her whole body rounds and softens, taking on the look associated with a tender and giving femininity. Physical difficulties often disappear. I have known women who had been plagued with intense pre-menstrual and menstrual pains all their lives to lose such symptoms in a matter of weeks. I have known women whose irregular periods have become regularized. And I have also known women with one or two desperately difficult pregnancies behind them who, becoming pregnant again, went through the entire nine months not only without discomfort but with a highly accelerated feeling of pleasure and well-being. These, then, are the results, or some of them, that a woman who is willing to give up the things of childhood and yield to her true self may expect. The return on such an investment of self is enormous. It is paid in the coinage of love returned for love given; love from one’s husband and children, love from friends, new and old, attracted by the endless largesse of the woman who has surrendered all to find all. _Chapter 17_ SEXUAL SURRENDER The ability to achieve normal orgasm can be called the physical counterpart of psychological surrender. In most cases of true frigidity it follows on a woman’s surrender of her rebellious and infantile attitudes as the day the night. It is the sign that she has given up the last vestige of resistance to her nature and has embraced womanhood with soul _and_ body. The achievement of orgasm, usually, is the _last_ step in the process of growing up. If one reviews in one’s mind the actual orgastic experience it is not difficult to see why this is so. For a woman orgasm requires a trust in one’s partner that is absolute. Recall for a moment that the physical experience is often so profound that it entails the loss of consciousness for a period of time. As we know, in sexual intercourse, as in life, man is the actor, woman the passive one, the receiver, the acted upon. Giving oneself up in this passive manner to another human being, making oneself his willing partner to such seismic physical experiences, means one must have complete faith in the other person. In the sexual embrace any trace of buried hostility, fear of one’s role, will show clearly and unmistakably.