This is the poetical way in which many newspaper editors have been introducing to their readers accounts of two recent incidents which, at the time of writing (this chapter), keep headline writers busy. One of the news items is the idyll of an heiress, still in her teens, who has made up her mind to marry a man of fifty or thereabout. The other is the heartbreak of a seventy year old husband, deserted by his twenty year old wife. The mating of winter and spring is a daily occurrence, both seasons being divided up about equally between the two sexes. The two unnatural matches which I mentioned above, however, stand in a class by themselves.
Many a young idler, gifted with good looks, has managed to play on the erotic feelings of some woman in her dotage and to annex a goodly portion of her wealth. Many an attractive girl, seeking the line of least effort, has been known to prefer[Pg 252] a union with a silly old man to the daily struggle for existence.
Disinterested Brides. In the two cases under discussion, on the other hand, no suspicion of sordidness could be cast on the bride-that-was or on the bride-to-be.
Both are wealthy, one of them immensely so. The bridegroom to be is, if not a poor man, at least in very modest circumstances.
A genuine love match in both cases. But the genuineness of love did not prevent a catastrophe in one case and will probably bring about a catastrophe in the other case as well.
In both cases, the men are probably normal and yielding to the very natural attraction of youth combined with beauty and refinement.
Both women, however, are abnormal, altho one of them, the runaway wife, may have regained her normality and awakened from her absurd dream.
Both are, or were, the victims of a fixation of the most acute type, on the father image indicating a morbid neurotic disposition.
Such unions can hardly ever hold out any promise of lasting happiness.
The Case of Wagner. There is, of course, the famous example of Wagner who, at fifty-seven[Pg 253] carried off the beautiful wife of Hans von Bülow, almost thirty years his junior, and lived happily with her until his death. But Wagner was at the time a marvelous example of physical and mental activity, energy and creative power. In no way, barring his facial appearance, could he suggest age or decay to his young wife. He remained to the last a romantic figure.
The glamor, however, which may surround a successful composer with a picturesque past, is not likely to dazzle in any way the bride of a riding master or of a New England manufacturer.
A Parent Fixation, as I explained in the chapters on the Family Romance and on Incest, is the more acute as it drives its victim to seek a closer duplicate of the parent type.
The man who seeks a woman for his mate because his mother was a woman is influenced by the most normal and biologically valuable of mother fixations. The race would come to an end but for that form of fixation.
The son of a blonde mother who cannot love a woman unless she is also a blonde, is less normal and less free in his choice of a mate than the preceding type. He is inhibited by childhood memories, but then, education and civilisation are little[Pg 254] more than inhibitions caused by childhood memories. That type simply marries in "his set" and can lead an otherwise very normal life.
He, however, who is irresistibly attracted by a woman exactly like his mother, not only as far as appearance, but also as far as age goes, is a childish, regressive neurotic, seeking the safety of childhood conditions and obsessed at times by unconscious incestuous cravings.
The Rock of Physical Incompatibility is often one on which such adventures are shipwrecked. A very young woman, ignorant of the sex life and its problems, unable to realise its meaning before marriage, may develop immediately after her union to an elderly man a very passionate temperament.
Either she will repress her cravings for physical love, which her too mature mate is unable to gratify, and she will develop anxiety states or hysteria.
Or she will be too healthy to repress her desires, and her disappointment may change her love into scorn, especially when conversation with other women or a clever suitor opens her eyes to what is lacking in her life.
A separation, sometimes complicated by the usual triangle situation, may become unavoidable.
[Pg 255]
There are cases in which both mates are frankly neurotic and were drawn together as invalids and weak-minded often are, by the similarity of their predicament.
The Plight of Two Neurotics. Both of them may, as I observed it once, seek safety in a mock-incestuous relationship, the older mate, seeking safety in a union with an immature human being, the younger mate in a union with the parent image. In one case which I have in mind, the husband, fifty-five years old, had been several times on the verge of exposure for unlawful "liberties" he took with very young girls. The wife, a few days after her father's death, married the old man who had been her father's associate and who had tried to seduce her when she was barely ten.
She visited me when a new scandal in which her husband became implicated caused her to leave him. She was considerably "mixed up" for, while young men had begun to attract her, she felt extremely self-conscious in their presence and could only enjoy herself in the company of elderly men who, in turn, reminded her too much of the nightmare thru which she had lived for two years.
A pious Catholic, she solved the conflict prema[Pg 256]turely, before I had time to bring insight into her mind, by fleeing from all sorts of men and into a convent.
Other cases have a less tragic history: A young woman of twenty-eight who had never been happy with her husband, (thirty), took advantage of the numberless opportunities war work and war drives gave to women, to become faithless to her husband. She had four short-lived affairs with men twice her age, then "broke down" when her husband secured a divorce for adultery. Analysis gave her insight into her father fixation which was not very deep and might never have driven her into overt acts but for the unusual conditions in which she found herself.
She is now happily remarried to a man of her age.
What the Community Says. Mates whose ages are out of proportion, are often thrown into deep discord by the pressure of the community's criticism. They might thrive on a desert island or on a farm or, as in the case of an explorer I knew, when surrounded almost continuously by an "inferior" race whose opinion ............