This divided view is particularly the attitude of women and becomes part of the neurosis of the housewife.

After all a woman does not marry an institution; she marries a man with whom she lives, sharing his life.  In the natural course of events she becomes the mother of the children to whom he is father.  We may dismiss as nonimportant the occasional freak marriage where a man and woman live apart, have no children and meet occasionally,—­for obvious purposes.  Such a marriage is not only sterile biologically, not only empty of the virtues of marriage, but encounters none of its difficulties.

This intimate individual relationship makes marriage when complete and successful 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.