most, at three-month intervals. It was never spontaneous. The husband was required to make an appointment for a "date" several days before actual intercourse. His wife would acquiesce to such a tryst only after she had refused him several times and had accumulated a great deal of guilt for so doing.
From the moment she made the appointment she would become anxious, and this would increase to the point where she was filled with actual dread. Often she would be forced to break the appointment and postpone it. As the time for the intercourse approached she would also experience feelings of rage, repeat to herself over and over, "Why must I, why must I?" In preparing for the act itself (putting her diaphragm in, inserting the jelly), she would linger for as much as an hour while her husband waited. She often found that her vaginal muscles contracted to such a degree that the insertion of the diaphragm was painful and difficult to accomplish.
With her misery increasing momently, she went, after these preparations, to the marital bed as one might to the executioner. Her husband's looks repelled her now; his nakedness seemed disgusting and offensive. She saw him as "skinny, white, and ugly, with an enormous penis. It was as if he were nothing but a big disgusting sexual organ."
It goes without saying that she could feel no tenderness or warmth—she could not even simulate it. She remained totally passive throughout the entire act, which her husband, in response to her rejection (as she later, in happier times, learned), hurried through as quickly as possible. It is interesting to note that, despite her own inability to respond, one of her bitterest complaints about her husband was that his love-making was mechanical, hasty, and that he never showed any tenderness.
It had never occurred to her, of course, that he might be
