.

Case X. The unfaithful husband.

Monogamous marriage is based upon the assumption that loyalty to a
single male is moral and possible. It is probable that in no age has
this agreement been loyally carried out by the husbands; it is probable
that in our own time the single standard of morals has first been
strongly emphasized. With the rise of women into equality one of the
important demands they have made is that men remain as loyal as
themselves. Therefore the reaction to unchastity or unfaithfulness on
the part of the man is apt to be more severe than in the past, on the
theory that where more is demanded failure in performance is felt the
keener.

The housewife, Mrs. F.C., aged thirty-five, is a prepossessing woman,
the mother of two children, and has been married for nine years. Her
health has always been fairly good, though in the last four years she
has been somewhat irritable. She attributed this to struggle to make
both ends meet, her husband being a workman with wages just over the
border line of sufficiency. They quarreled "no more than other couples
do", were as much in love "as other couples are", to use her phrases.
She was above her class in education, read what are usually called
advanced books, was "strong for suffrage", etc. However she was a good
housekeeper, devoted to her children and faithful to her husband. Their
sexual relations were normal and up till six months before I saw her she
thought herself a well-mated, rather fortunate woman.

Out of a clear sky came proof of long-continued unfaithfulness on the
part of her "domestic" husband: a chance bill for women's clothes
fluttered out of his pocket and under the bed, so that next morning she
found it; an unbelieving moment and then a visit to the address on the
bill, and proof plenty that he had been disloyal, not only to her but to
the children, who had been obliged to scrimp along while he helped
maintain another woman. Humiliated beyond measure by her disaster,
unable to endure her past memories of happiness and faith, with an
unstable world rocking before her, through the revelation that a quiet,
contented, loving man could be completely false, she found no adequate
reason for living and became a helpless prey to her troubled mind. "A
temporary unfaithfulness, a yielding to sudden temptation" she could
understand, but a determined plan of duplicity shattered her whole
scheme of values. A very severe psychoneurosis followed, and her
chi