Because the standardized family relationship involves so much more radical a readjustment in the life of woman than of man, it has almost always been the feminine partner who has taken refuge in neurotic symptoms in order to escape the difficulties of the situation.  After the marriage ceremony, the man’s life goes on much as before, so far as his social activities are concerned, but woman takes up the new duties connected with the care of the home and her child-bearing functions.  Moreover, the sexual life of woman is in many ways more complex than that of man.  She has been subjected to more repressions and inhibitions, and as a result there has been more modification of her emotional reactions in the field of love.  This greater complexity of her love life makes adaptation to marriage more problematical in the case of woman.

Although the neurotic tendencies of modern women have been an important factor for the production of disharmony in the family life, there are certain variations of the individual sex life which are more universally significant.  The conditioned emotional reactions which environmental influences have built up around the sexual impulse of each member of society invariably determine the choice of the mate and give rise to extremely complicated problems by the very nature of the selective process.  It is largely a matter of chance whether the mate chosen in accordance with the ideals of romantic love and because of some fascinating trait which acts as an erotic fetish or in conformity with a parental fixation will prove a congenial companion through life.

But the complexity of the situation lies in the fact that the erotic impulses may become conditioned to respond to an indefinite number of substituted stimuli.  For example, the parental fixation may become reconditioned by focussing upon some special characteristic of the father or mother, which becomes an erotic fetish.  If the mate is selected on the basis of this fetishistic attraction, he (or she) may prove to be so unlike the parent in other respects as to lose all the affection which was originally inspired.  A concrete illustration of these conflicting emotional reactions is the case of the girl who declared that she feared her fiance as much as she loved him, but felt that she must marry him nevertheless.  An investigation showed that her almost compulsive feeling about her lover was due to the fact that his gestures and manner of regarding her, in fact his whole bearing, reminded her of her dead father, while in other respects he was totally repugnant to her because his character traits were so far removed from those of her father ideal.