At age twenty, Cathy met Roy, a painter who had con...

At age twenty, Cathy met Roy, a painter who had con tracted to refinish the house. He asked for a cup of coffee and insisted on repaying Cathy by taking her out. Handsome, impulsive, and irrationally jealous, Roy soon monopolized all Cathy's free time. Her housework was left undone and her mother was furious. Caught between her mother and Roy, Cathy decided to elope.

At least Roy seemed to care. Marriage became a grim repetition of Cathy's early life. Roy was often unemployed and never helped around the house. So Cathy worked both at home and on the job. Roy accused her of having affairs with patients and occasionally hit her. He demanded that she respond in bed to prove her love for him. This requirement annihilated what little response Cathy could muster. She attempted to soothe Roy by faking a climax, by returning home immediately after work, and by never leaving the house without his permission.

Too frightened and depressed to separate from Roy, Cathy found herself pregnant. At first she was happy because Roy was more considerate, but by the end of her pregnancy her misery was compounded by swollen ankles and a huge abdomen. Labor commenced while she was at work in the nursing home. The call to Roy was unanswered, so she completed her duties, and at the end of her shift, took a bus to the hospital. Alone and in pain, Cathy delivered a baby girl. Roy arrived the next day and expressed disappointment in the baby's sex. He presented her with a bouquet of flowers and announced that he was leaving with a construction crew shortly.

Three weeks later, Cathy was home with baby Mitzi awaiting word from Roy. Mitzi cried incessantly from late afternoon until early morning. Cathy fed her repeatedly, burped her, rocked and changed her, to no avail. Finally she called the hospital and was told to put the baby to bed. Mitzi continued to fuss, and Cathy became more and more upset. She shook Mitzi violently, and for a few moments there was silence. Then Mitzi began again, this time with a high pitched whine like a cat's cry. Cathy suddenly lunged forward, snatched Mitzi and threw her against the wall, screaming, "I'll teach you!" Two hours later, Mitzi was dead.

Cathy was reared not in the slums, but in a privileged, middle-class neighborhood. Yet she developed the same helplessness, terror, and resentment as the women who lived in the high-rise apartment house. Cathy expected to be overburdened and victimized; her choice of a mate fulfilled these expectations. To ward off criticism and abuse, she strove to please everyone, thus eliminating her own needs as unimportant. Her fear, depression, and inability to accept passive pleasure severely compromised her sexual response, even before Roy commanded her to climax. Ordinarily, Cathy was a kind, responsible girl. Underneath lay rage which erupted into irrational violence when she could no longer please Roy by bearing a boy infant, or Mitzi through soothing her suffering.

The link between anger and sex is even clearer when a woman such as Cathy marries a reasonable man. Such a choice is a fluke or an intellectual decision, as she commonly picks a cruel, fearsome, or rejecting male who will recapitulate her childhood. A few months after a more conventional marriage she becomes the wrathful, controlling, critical partner who abuses. She may withhold sex, prefer masturbation to making love, criticize her husband's technique, or openly take a lover.