Next perhaps to actual disloyalty women feel most the cessation of the attentions, courtesies, and remembrances of their unmarried life.  Women expect this to happen and usually they forgive it in the man who devotes himself to his family, struggles for a livelihood or better, and helps in the care of the children.  It is the hyperaesthetic type of housewife spoken of previously who weighs against her husband’s devotion a minor dereliction in courtesy.

For it is too common in women to let a momentary neglect or absent-minded discourtesy outweigh a lifetime of devotion.  This is part of a feminine devotion to manner and form, of which men are, comparatively speaking, innocent.

Aside from this phase of woman’s character there are men who either rapidly or gradually resume after marriage their bachelor freedom, to the neglect of their wives.  Though for some time after marriage they give up their “freedom” to play consort and escort, sooner or later they sink back into finding their recreation with their male friends,—­at club, lodge, saloon, pool room, etc.  When night comes they are restless.  At first one excuse or another takes them out, later they break boldly from the domestic ties and only occasionally and under protest do they stay at home or escort the housewife to church, visiting, or the theater.

(It needs be said at this point that in America married life often proceeds too far in the domestication of the man, in his complete separation from male companionship, in a never-broken companionship between man and wife.  This is distinctly unhealthy for the man, for he requires in his recreation the sense of freedom from restraint that he can have only in masculine company; where the difficult attitude of chivalry can be discarded for an equality and a frankness impossible even with his wife.)

The housewife, thus left alone, though wounded, may adjust herself.  She may build up a companionship for herself in church or amongst her neighbors; she may leave her husband and get a divorce; she may become unfaithful on the basis that turn about is fair play; she may devote herself with greater zeal to her home and children and build up a serene life against odds.

But often she does none of these things.  Hurt in her pride, she struggles to gain back her husband.  Tears and reproaches fail, sickness sometimes succeeds.  If she is childless she becomes obsessed with the belief that a child would hold her husband home.  If she is failing in the freshness of her beauty she makes a pathetic effort to hold her indifferent mate through cosmetics and beauty specialists.  Without the courage and character to make or break the situation she falls into a feeling of inferiority from which originates her headaches, her feelings of unreality, her loss of enthusiasm, her depressed mind and body.