The sensual gratification which a woman experiences in coition is normally not the chief pleasure, but to her the enjoyment of the act is the sum of the lustful satisfaction, plus the "love touch", plus the kisses and caresses, plus the feeling of confidence that her husband will fulfil his share of parental responsibility. The sensual factor is much more powerful in man than in woman, and a man's love is naturally not so deep and lasting as a woman's for to her love means everything in life, while to him it is merely one of the great delights of life. As Madame de Stael said: "Love is the history of woman's life; it is an episode in man's".
A shock to a woman's real love is almost a mortal blow, while a man more readily recovers himself and finds another object; but the more he is effeminated by sensuality, the more dependent he becomes on women, and the more liable he is to be ruined by a series of counterfeit love affairs. Woman loves more specially the soul of the man and the attributes of his mind and heart, and when she becomes a mother she shares her love between the child and her husband. Sexual passion in its full force exercises far more influence over the life of a woman, for not only is her corporeal condition dominated by her physical sex, but her husband represents the only possible means of gratification for her sexual longings meaning by this far more than the mere voluptuous embrace.
Men who have been passion's slaves, whether by onanism or venery, or men who have had the pure promptings of the sexual instinct vitiated by disease or impure mental stains, are incapable of loving truly. Such individuals find the chief object of their love in the voluptuous side of women's characteristics; but such an over sensual love cannot remain constant and true after desire has failed, nor if a greater degree of satisfaction can be illegitimately obtained elsewhere.
A form of love which is outside the bounds of physiological love, and quite peculiar to the human race, is a "romantic love" of an extravagant, wild, imaginative and idealized form. It is of course wholly unnatural, being indicative of a mental sickliness, and belonging only to those who have not thrown off the sentimental thraldom of youth. Romantic love comparatively seldom leads to marriage, and its subtle spell is not to be compared to the pure glow of a physiological love. It deals principally with the wooings and cooings and sonnets which are on the borders of love land, but not with such impulses as spring from true sources of love. In such alliances, when romance dies, love dies. Heal love is intensely sexual without being sensual. Eeal love knits souls together so that one would unhesitatingly suffer all extremes for the other.
The feminine grace of a modest and well bred woman influences her to be reserved and unaggressive, and a woman who makes the advances in courtship is an anomaly. And yet love is a woman's very life, and a necessity to her far more than it is to a man.
The penalties of dallying with chastity mean almost certain ruin to a woman, because maternity will probably follow any indiscreet interchange of embraces on her part, and at the best her genitals usually retain permanently the marks of injury by the violator, so that after a single lapse from virtue she forfeits her right to expect marriage or love, while the man escapes these penalties.
After intercourse the man speedily loses sensual desire, and all the effects on him are trivial in comparison with the results to her, for, in addition to the physical perils of unchaste intercourse, she suffers a deeper and more lasting mental impression which painfully degrades her purer character. A woman's modest, confiding and yielding nature fills her whole soul with a trustful and perfect love toward the one to whom she has committed herself; and she has always been too ready to put her whole faith in a man after he has once gained her love, and has too often believed him and relied upon him outside of the bonds of matrimony. It would seem unkind to Satan himself to believe that he would use the compelling influence of a thing so sweet as love to further his diabolical plans; but there are men everywhere who persuade their victims into the belief that a sensual love between them excuses the gratification of their passions, and then abandon them.