He has lost the reasonable balance between work and play, doing and feeling, active and passive pleasuring. Freud recognized the danger of overemphasis in either direction when he responded to a question about what a healthy man needs to do. He replied, "Lieben und Arbeiten"-"to love and to work." "Love is work" would characterize many families today.
The pathetically familiar suburban wife who frantically volunteers
for "anything" is an example. She may feel so
depleted after the day's station wagon shuttle, malfunctioning
appliances, and parent-teacher conferences that she has
little taste for a romp in the hay with a husband who does the
"really important" things. One such lady interrupted her
mate in the middle of lovemaking to inform him that the
toaster was broken. (Schwab, 1974) The career mother may
be more harassed than her suburban counterpart, who at
least can find time alone to masturbate.
The overemphasis on work also takes its toll in the man's erotic response. An
eminent sociologist, John Cuber, quotes one wife: "He's their
top designer, and everybody knows it. Next year he's sure to
be vice-president. But when he gets home at night, he is
tired. I make sure the girls are asleep or at least in their
rooms. Dinner is late, and just for the two of us-after a lot of
drinks. We don't have much sex-but I don't expect it under
the circumstances."
The work ethic teaches that business must come before
pleasure, and utility before beauty. Sex as a duty to one's
mate remains high on the priority list, while sex for pleasure
slips toward the bottom. Even play becomes work as the golf
course is used to make connections and lunches to cement
deals. (Kahl, 1957)
Fun with the family may mean a trip with the kids spent
racing from line to line at the amusement park, awaiting a
few seconds of kaleidoscopic flight punctuated by nausea.
Relaxation is the retreat to the anonymous cocoon of the
boob tube, or the peach fuzz in the head after the third martini.
The average middle-class male is also the average male
client at the sex therapy clinic.
His impotence may be precipitated
by the failure to gain a promotion, or his premature
ejaculation a symptom of resentment at his mate's increasing
distance and lack of interest. Subtly, sex is now a product
also. The sex clinic client would like a list of infallible techniques
and is fully prepared to work as diligently as possible.
He wishes to get an erection in thirty seconds upon sighting
a nude female posterior, and expects to memorize the proper
combinations of sensate buttons to press in order to elicit a
medium, large, or super-economy orgasm. His problems
must stem from a slight malalignment of the sprockets, easily
mended by a certain screwdriver which never bends. If
cursed with a lone screwdriver which not only bends, but
kinks and wobbles, how about an implant? The labor of love
is more labor than love.
Many well-educated young men and women make a transition
from being young, liberated, and zesty to being old,
useful and tired. Marriage is likely to have occurred someplace
in the process. Still in their twenties, and fresh from
training, the graduates enter the business or professional
world.