cessful the happiest human experience. Soberly speaking, it is then
the flower of existence, satisfying biologically and humanly, giving
peace and satisfaction to body and mind. This is the ideal, the "happy
ending" at which most romances, novels, plays, and all the daydreams of
youth leave us. Warm, cozy, intense domesticity, where passion is
legitimate and love and friendship eternal; where children play around
the hearth fire; of which death only is the ending!

This ideal is not realized largely because no ideal is. How often is it
closely approximated? Experience says seldom. That implies no reproach
against marriage, for we are to judge marriage by the rest of life and
not by an ideal. A world in which great wars occur frequently, in which
economic conflict is constant, in which sickness and disaster are never
absent; where education is occasional, where reason has yet to rule in
the larger policies and where folly occupies the high places,--why
expect marriage to be more nearly perfect than the life of which it is a
part? To be reasonably comfortable and happy in marriage is all we may
expect.

What are the difficulties confronting the partners which impede
happiness and especially which bring the neurosis of the housewife? For
after all we can only examine the field for our own purpose.

We may divide the difficulties as follows from the standpoint of the
neurosis of the housewife:

1. Those that arise from the sex relationship itself.

2. Those that arise from conflicts of will, purpose, ideas.

3. Those that arise from the types of husbands.

4. Those that arise from the types of wives. (This has already been
considered under the heading Types Predisposed to the Neurosis.)

Before we go on to the consideration of these various factors we must
repeat what has been emphasized frequently in this book.

That the change in the status of woman implies difficulty in the
marriage relationship. If only _one_ will is expected to be dominant in
the household, the man's, then there can arise no conflict. If the form
of the household is unaltered, but if the woman demands its control or
expects equality, then conflict arises. If a woman expects a man to beat
her at his pleasure, as has everywhere been the case and still is in
some places, if she considers it just, brutality exists only in extremes
of violence. If she considers a blow, or even a rough word, an
unendurable insult, then brutality arises with the comm