Theistic Psychology: 
The Scientific Knowledge of God
Extracted from the
Correspondential Sense of Sacred Scripture

Gender behavior in marriage is defined along three interacting domains called the individual's threefold self. The individual's affective self operates the feelings and motivations we maintain in dating or marriage relationships. The cognitive self operates the thinking and reasoning we do in these relationships. The individual's sensorimotor self operates the sensations, perceptions, and motor acts we perform in gender relationships. The category of "motor acts" includes overt verbal behavior (discourse, talk) and non-linguistic behaviors (expressions, appearance, style). Be aware however that motor acts and talking occur not from themselves but from cognitive acts (our thinking and lifestyle philosophy), and these in turn occur from our affective acts, which are motivations and needs that guide our thinking towards goals. Sensorimotor acts, cognitive acts, and affective acts form a perfect synergy between feelings, thoughts, and actions. This is called the threefold self.

In other words, each of us is involved in gender relationships in which we operate along three interconnected domains of behavior. The deepest and most determinative is the affective operation in which we maintain selected motivations and desires in accordance with our primary needs and satisfactions. The affective operations in our mind are the most determinative because they select and guide the other two domains. Affective operations guide and influence the direction of operations in the cognitive self, so that what we think or how we justify things cognitively, is selective and responsive to our affective motives. We entertain a way of thinking that will support and promote our motivations and feelings. Our cognitive behavior adjusts itself to support our affective behavior. The affective and the cognitive domains together select and determine the overt sensorimotor behavior of our overt actions, appearance, words, and styles. What we do and say (=overt gender behavior) is the result of what we think, which is the result of how we feel (what motivates us).

Note that we are often more aware of what we think than of how we feel (or what motivates us). In relationships between a man and a woman, women tend to be more aware of their own feelings and motivations than men are aware of their own feelings and motivations. This is because women are more motivated to spend time and focus figuring out how they really feel or what they really want. Women tend also to be more aware of the man's feelings and motivations than the men are of their own feelings and motivations. However, this does not mean that men have less feelings than women, as it is sometimes misrepresented in gender stereotyped thinking.

Note well this principle: Both men and women have the same amount of feelings and emotions. This fact can be observed when you analyze how men behave and react to things moment by moment--with surprise, or with anger, or being pleased or displeased, feeling like talking or feeling like keeping quiet, being in a good mood or bad, getting excited when telling a story, picking a fight, feeling resentful, liking something, appreciating something, feeling happy about something, etc. These observations prove that men equally with women have feelings and react with emotions all the time.

Emotional reactions and feeling motivations are a necessary part of all thinking and acting. It is not possible to act and react in a conversation or interaction without feelings and motivations being present all the time, and every instant. Nevertheless there are differences between men and women as to how aware or conscious they are of their own feelings and emotions from moment to moment, or of the emotions of the partner. Women tend to specialize in becoming aware of feelings and emotions of their partner. They are motivated to practice more than men in focusing consciously on feelings in gender relationships.

This difference in the skill of gender perceptiveness between a man and a woman creates an active gender dynamic in which the woman is motivated to prod her man to become more aware of his and her feelings and motivations. The man tends to resist this "affective prodding" and finds it unpleasant and objectionable. This creates a constant strain on the developing relationship. The woman feels that the man doesn't want to "commit" and is resisting the process of conjunction, thereby maintaining the couple in a state of division and conflict which is not totally satisfying to the woman.

Both men and women can gain understanding of the initial oppositeness between the sexes--women striving to conjoin, men resisting the process. The analysis of how men and women talk to each other reveals this dynamic opposition between men and women, as exemplified in the studies reported in our textbook by Deborah Tannen--Gender and Discourse. Analyzing verbal interactions between men and women is a powerful method for bringing out the differences between how they use talk to either oppose each other or to gain deeper intimacy and mutual support.

The views of "Dr. Laura" in her book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands presents the point of view that men are in general "simpler creatures" than women, and that a wife needs to treat her husband in a certain way in order to keep him happy and well functioning. This is a different model of marriage than the unity model because it establishes an unequal status between men and women. This point of view puts less of responsibility on the men and more on the women. The wife is told to adjust to this unequal status rather than seek equality or unity.

The individual's threefold self in gender relationships is a joint product of biology, socialization, culture, and spiritual make up. As children we acquire the relationship style of our parents, other adults, and the media (TV, movies, songs, magazines, cartoons, commercials). By the time we begin adolescent or adult relationships, we have been exposed to years of stereotyped gender behaviors in all three domains of the threefold self:

(a) exploitative feelings towards the "opposite" sex (affective self),

(b) sexist thoughts that stereotype the other gender (cognitive self),

(c) injurious or hostile actions and words against the partner (sensorimotor self).

These affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor patterns of stereotyped gender behavior create an atmosphere of discord and conflict even as the partners strive to love each other and become a functioning and satisfying unit.

11.3.1.1  Mental Anatomy of Women and Men

The expression "mental anatomy" at first sounds like a metaphor about the mind. We are used to hearing about the anatomy of the physical body. But regarding the mind, it is common for us to imagine that it either doesn't exist, or if it does exist, it is something gaseous or transparent, not solid, just as "a spirit" or "departed person," is often portrayed in literature or television. But we are also familiar with the portrayal of angels who appear on earth and have physical bodies while they are here. But we imagine that after they return to "heaven," they no longer have a real body for being married. We all have been exposed to the various fantasies or imaginings that people have about the afterlife, including our own. This is why it is essential that we stick with the facts and the actual observations. Swedenborg was the only scientist in history who was allowed by God to be conscious in his spiritual mind before resuscitation, and therefore he is the only scientist in the history of the world who can give us factual information about the spiritual world of the afterlife in eternity. This is looking at the Swedenborg Reports with the positive bias in science perspective.

It is fascinating to discover what married couples are like when they reach the heavens in their mind. Swedenborg's observations of the relationship between husbands and wives in heaven give us factual information about the future we can have in our immortality after we are no longer connected to the physical world. People who find their way into the heavens of their mind, are married, to symbolize and reflect their mental unity. Amazingly, when Swedenborg saw a conjugial couple from a distance, he saw but one person walking or standing. But when he came nearer to the couple, they were a husband wife (see Section xx). The fact that they appear as one person is an outward representation of their inward mental unity.

From Swedenborg's description of the difference between men and women, I constructed various visual charts to picture their mental anatomy. By studying the details pictured in somewhat different way, it might be easier for you to gain a more detailed knowledge and understanding of how men and women differ in their spiritual anatomy. Remember: spiritual = afterlife of eternity. So the anatomical difference between the mind of men and women remains forever to distinguish them from birth to eternity.

This diagram is from an article  I wrote on "spiritual genes in marriage" and is available here:   www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow2.html

Spiritual Gender Genes

The following diagram is from an article on "The Spiritual Psychobiology of Marriage" and is available here:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow1.html#biology

The diagram immediately above shows the two phases or stages of marriage. Initially, the man's consciousness of externalizing truth, which is the truth he knows, conjoins itself with the wife's externalizing good. That is the wife's externalizing affections conjoin with the husband's externalizing cognitions. Thus they form an externalizing marriage or bond. It is externalizing because the man's truth and the wife's affections are both in the externalizing or lower degrees of their consciousness. However, if the two partners continue to grow together and conjoin more deeply within, then they enter phase 2 which is an internal union or conjunction. Now their internalizing parts are conjoined or united--the man's internalizing good and the woman's internalizing truth. Now for the first time the man becomes truly a husband and the woman truly a wife.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 725. That by "male and female" are signified truths and goods, is evident from what has been said and shown before, namely, that "man" and "male" signify truth, and "wife" and "female" good. But "male and female" are predicated of things of the understanding, and "man and wife" of things of the will, for the reason that marriage is represented by man and wife, and not so much by male and female. For truth can never of itself enter into marriage with good, but good can with truth; because there is no truth which is not produced from good and thus coupled with good. If you withdraw good from truth, nothing whatever remains but words. (AC 725)

AC 718. That by "man and wife" is signified that the truths were conjoined with goods, is evident from the signification of "man" as being truth, which is of the understanding, and from the signification of "wife" as being good, which is of the will (concerning which before), and also from the fact that man has not the least of thought, nor the least of affection and action, in which there is not a kind of marriage of the understanding and the will. Without a kind of marriage, nothing ever exists or is produced. In the very organic forms of man, both composite and simple, and even in the most simple, there is a passive and an active, which, if they were not coupled as in a marriage, like that of man and wife, could not even be there, still less produce anything, and the case is the same throughout universal nature. These incessant marriages derive their source and origin from the heavenly marriage; and thereby there is impressed upon everything in universal nature, both animate and inanimate, an idea of the Lord's kingdom. (AC 718)

In the diagram below, the same process is portrayed. The externalizing union in stage 1 is shown to bond the man's externalizing truth to the wife's externalizing good. This is not so much a true union as a partnership since it resides in externalizing (or lower) parts of the consciousness. Husband and wife as partners are adjoined to each other by externalizing natural life and family, but they are not yet conjoined from within by inner or spiritual life. But in stage 2, the husband's internalizing good is conjoined to the wife's internalizing truth. Now the marriage consists of his affections covered over with her truths. This is a true conjunction or union because it resides in the higher or internalizing regions of their consciousness and life. Only when this stage of internal conjunction is achieved can they be regenerated into a heavenly marriage and live together in eternity.

Couples who do not progress to an internal union of minds or spirits remain separated in their internals, and when they meet again in the other life, they live with one another again for a brief period. They then can become aware of each other's internal character and disposition, and these separate them. Each is then given another partner with whom they can enter into an internal marriage in heaven. But this happens only when both have been regenerated while still in the physical body. If they are unsuitable to each other by internal disposition or genius and separate, the one who is regenerate goes to heaven with the newly given conjugial partner or soul mate, while the other who is not regenerated goes to hell where they enter into an infernal concubinage with a partner. These infernal marriages are purely externalizing and both partners are "devils" who hate each other's guts yet are forced to endure each other in a marriage made in hell.

Research and personal observation confirm that most couples report experiencing oppositional or negative feelings, and at times acting upon them by exploiting, abusing, or injuring their partner. When couples have a disagreement or fight, physical and mental abuse is practiced by men more than by women in the majority of societies and cultures. When people reason under the influence of exploitative motivations, they tend to misinterpret the intentions of their partner and tend to use stereotyped, inaccurate, and prejudiced thinking. Our verbal behavior will reflect this style of biased thinking. So will our other actions.

There is an advantage in gaining control over our gender behavior in the three domains--affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. We can avoid those cultural and psychological traits and habits that interfere with adaptive, successful long term marriage relationships. The benefits of a stable successful long term partnership are extremely attractive. We will explore a particular principle in marriage relationship called the conjoint self.

According to the "unity" model of marriage, the perfection of unity in a marriage increases through differentiation and reciprocity of behavior in the threefold self of the two partners, and is a spiritual union that lasts to eternity. In a unity marriage, the husband and wife develop a conjoint self, while their former individual self recedes into the background and no longer operates.

The unity marriage is not achieved by promise or desire alone. There are developmental levels of unity that married partners must go through with each other, like a growth process that takes many years of dedicated effort. The "conjoint self" refers to a husband and wife who have achieved unity at all levels of the threefold self (as explained below). Each individual has been changed, dropping off some traits and acquiring new ones that can fit together. This is called growing together in reciprocity. The husband has to abandon some traits he cherished since childhood because these habits caused opposition and disunity. The wife has to abandon some traits that she perceives do not fit with her husband's character. Both have to acquire new traits that could fit together as a unit. The old traits that were abandoned and the new traits that were acquired consist of sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective traits in the threefold self. That is: habits of external activities, habits of thinking, and habits of internal feeling.

Levels of unity are ordered from external to more and more interior unity, as will be explained below. For instance, an external level of unity between marital partners involves their sensorimotor portion of the threefold self. They like and enjoy to do things together like dancing, touching each other, partying, camping, watching movies, eating out, driving, talking about their favorite topics, and so on. These overt "external" activities involve sensory and motor interactions, including verbal, which is an overt motor activity. Of course every sensorimotor activity involves thinking and feeling but these cognitive and affective operations are not visible, and the focus of the two partners at this stage is on the external activity of the other. There is less focus or concern on what the other is thinking or feeling.

Note that these joint external activities do not necessarily mean that the two partners are in agreement with each other's way of thinking, each other's attitudes, or feelings and motivations. The cognitive and affective self of each partner may not be in agreement, and they may even be competitive or hostile to the other. What is on the inside that is not visible (affective and cognitive self) may be in opposition and even hatred against the partner, while what shows on the outside--the sensory-motor activity, may appear harmonious and compatible. This underlying disagreement or dislike becomes visible when there is an overt fight during which the two partners show their anger, resentment, and disrespect for one other. Afterwards they make up, and the cognitive disrespect and affective dislike recede again into the underlying invisible state, lurking there, until the next fight at which time the abuse and disrespect come out again.

There is therefore a first level of the conjoint self, and this is external, involving sensorimotor reciprocity and joint achievement, without necessarily there being an interior agreement and respect for the partner. Women, more than men, tend to experience this external phase of the relationship as unsatisfactory, painful, and injurious. Women often have to bond with other women to support and reassure each other during this phase of disharmony with their husband or partner.

Men tend to bond with other men by complaining about women and speaking about them with disrespect. They also keep secrets from their women and do things they want to hide from them. Men do this in order to obtain sexual favors. This deception is a method of exploiting women and dehumanizing them. At this external level of unity, men feel more comfortable than women because they exercise more control in the relationship. Men tend to resist closer, more intimate relationship phases, in order to maintain their cognitive and affective independence. A man ordinarily dislikes giving up independence in his private thinking and feeling, while a woman is generally motivated to conjoin her thinking and feeling with her man--if only he lets her. A woman strives to achieve mutual and reciprocal dependence, while a man strives to retain independence. This creates a conflict dynamic between them, especially in the first level of unity which is external, involving the sensorimotor self only.

This intrinsic difference between women and men occurs at all levels of their humanity: biological, mental, and spiritual. Biologically, women make themselves dependent on men for reproduction, parenting, and lifestyle habits. Mentally, women love and enjoy the man's intelligence and inventiveness, and adopt his ideas and philosophies as her own. Spiritually, women represent inner wisdom surrounded by external love. Men represent inner love surrounded by external intelligence. Women and men are thus born reciprocals of each other, so they may better fit into a perfect unity.

If women and men were similar in these fundamental traits, they could only form external relationships and could never achieve the married state of the conjoint self. Their selves would remain separate because like cannot conjoin with like. Like can be adjoined to like, but only reciprocals can conjoin. For example, think of the shape of reciprocals and how they would not be able to fit together if they were similar instead of reciprocal: pot and handle; key and key hole; shoe and lace; button and button hole, snaps, window and window sill, picture and frame, etc.

Couples begin their relationship together by sensorimotor reciprocity: talking to each other, eating, dancing, driving, doing fun things, etc. This is the first level of unity.

The second level of unity is deeper in that it involves the cognitive self of the two partners. This includes how they think, how they reason, how they justify things, what they consider acceptable or unacceptable, what information or knowledge they have, what philosophy of life and religion. These cognitive behaviors and habits are more resistant to mutual adaptation and reciprocity in the relationship. For instance, a man and a woman can be married for years and yet maintain contradictory attitudes, beliefs, and judgments. The external sensorimotor level of unity does not necessarily lead to a more interior unity of thinking and reasoning (cognitive habits). Yet many couples achieve a cognitive level unity by joint involvement in running a home and raising children together. They see 'eye to eye' on many things and enrich each other's thinking process by mutual stimulation and interest. When a man and a woman achieve this second level unity, they can love each other more deeply and the relationship continues to grow and become more satisfying and enriching.

Achieving cognitive reciprocity is often easier for women because they are mentally oriented towards conjunction. They desire to become a conjoint self more than they desire to retain their own ideas and philosophy. But men generally are in love with their own thinking and ideas and resist change for the sake of the conjoint self. Men see the conjoint self as giving up selfhood while women see it as gaining togetherness.

However, when a wife perceives that her husband's thinking is corrupt, she tries to change the man's thinking instead of adopting it for herself. A wife has a keen perception of what is her husband's corrupt thinking, even while he himself is blind to it. This is because spiritually, a woman is inner wisdom covered over with love, while a man is inner love covered over with external intelligence. So a woman perceives more with her inner wisdom while a man with his outward intelligence. Inner wisdom can see corrupted thinking where outward intelligence cannot. Outward intelligence is motivated by sensorimotor goals while inner wisdom is motivated by affective goals. But when the husband's allows his outward intelligence to be influenced by the wife's inner wisdom, his outward intelligence is elevated or made more excellent, so that he too can then perceive corrupt thinking in himself and others.

The inmost level of unity involves the partners' affective self -- their feelings, motivations, loves, ultimate goals of happiness and togetherness. Affective reciprocity is the basis of an eternal unity between husband and wife. Only conjoint feelings, loves, desires, or goals are allowed to remain operational in their mind. This is achieved by a systematic and long term effort in reciprocal growth. The partners abandon their feelings, loyalties, goals, or involvements that are not conjoint and exclude the other partner. Affective reciprocity or conjunction would be weakened if one partner reserves an area of their mind or involvement that excludes the other partner. For example, some husbands spend socializing time with male friends. The activity is such that they don't want wives or girl friends around, even if they are not cheating on them or doing something bad. But the fact that a husband's wife is excluded, not wanted there, means that he is retaining independent involvements and loves. These affective habits and enjoyments are not reciprocal. They do not contribute to unity in marriage, but slows the process down or acts against it.

However, this principle does not apply to women in the same way. Women have loyalties and friendships with each other for different goals and feelings than men have with each other. The affections and involvements that married women have with other women is for supporting the marriage, not resisting it. Men have an inborn resistance to marital unity which they have to fight against most of their life. Their male friendships that exclude the wife respond to their desire to escape total unity with their wife. This is not so with married women since they have an inborn desire and need for total unity with their husband.

There are two principles in this model of "conjugial love" described by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

• First Principle--Differentiation:  No part of a woman is like any part of a man and vice versa.

• Second Principle--Reciprocity:  The perfection of unity increases with the diversity of its composing elements.

• Third Principle--Eternity: The unity marriage relationship is eternal, continuing in the afterlife of heaven.

According to the first principle of marital unification the threefold self of men and women are biologically and spiritually different. This is maximum or total differentiation or diversity in every  part. According to the second principle of marital unification, the diversity becomes unified through reciprocity by which the traits of a woman can harmonize or fit together with the traits of a man, and vice versa. According to the third principle, marriage is a spiritual union of mind and spirit that is not just for this world -- "till death do us part," but is eternal, since the spirit of a person is immortal (for more on this topic see the Psych 459, G21 Lecture Notes on Theistic Psychology:  www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic ). 

Here are some illustrations of these two principles acting together. Consider where we are familiar with unity through differentiation and reciprocity (though not with eternity). At the physical level we can see how a bolt, nut, and washer work together structurally to achieve a tight grip on some object. The form of the nut must fit exactly the form of the bolt. The bolt is different in form from the nut, and it is the particular way they are different that makes them work together, reciprocally. They would not work together as a unit if there was no differentiation and reciprocity between them. Consider the same principle operating in other functionally related objects like a hammer and nail, or like a purse and its strap, or a fork and knife, or glove and hand, show and foot, etc. When you dance, your partner must make the reciprocal steps -- not the same steps, as you are making, or else you step on each other. In a four-part harmony with men and women, in a quartet or other choir, the singers are differentiated into soprano, alto, tenor, and base. This differentiation is combined into a unity when they sing reciprocally according to the arrangement prescribed for each part. The result is a harmony that is rich and attractive but which cannot be achieved in any other way.

In the sensorimotor domain of gender interactions we can see how a woman's body is differentiated from a man's body, and how the parts of the man are shaped to fit the parts of the woman. No doubt this is the analogy upon which electrical objects are designated, as for  instance the wall receptacle is called the female and the plug is called the male. They act together to form a unit through differentiation and reciprocity of physical form or shape. When you consider sports teams, government departments, or armies, you notice a similar reciprocity of different role behaviors, so that they can achieve joint action, unity, or several acting as one. In fact throughout nature, and even the universe, you will find a unified whole made of differentiated parts acting in synergy. It makes sense therefore to have a model of gender unity that is based on the two acting as one through differentiation and reciprocity.

In other words, it is the differentiation that makes the unity out of reciprocity. The man and the woman as a couple can be totally integrated, or form a unity, because they are completely different but in a way that is reciprocal. Nothing of the male can be like anything of the female (Yin/Yang diagram shows all white vs. all black for the two). But they curve around into each other, in a perfect fit of reciprocal union, the perfect circle. This is the principle of "synergy" which is defined as "combined action or operation." It comes from the Greek "synergos" or  working together. In business "synergism" refers to "a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts)" (Merriam-Webster Online). The principle of synergy operates universally where separate elements interact to produce a joint goal. Synergy is obvious in the physical body where thousands of separate and differentiated parts work together to produce the functions of a normal human body.

Society is viewed as made of separate and unique family units forming themselves into a community and abiding by mutual norms, laws, and expectations. The same reasoning applies to the marriage relationship which society officially sanctions and licenses. Society recognizes that a married couple forms a new unit that acts together for common goals and are united by positive feelings and loyalties. Married couples who live according to the unity model represent the most perfect unit or a "one" that a man and a woman can form together. Affective unity is the most essential, and it influences the cognitive and sensorimotor unity that is possible for that couple. Unity is achieved through the synergy of the threefold self of each partner acting together. There is no independence in any area or under any circumstance. Even when the two are in physically different locations (e.g., at home vs. at work) they remain united because each partner acts and thinks when alone as if the other were present.

A different approach is that of "equity model" in marriage. This idea is transmitted in our socialization process and is part of our culture so that everyone has norms of equity in various areas of living. This is a good thing in public life because it acts to reduce discrimination against women which has been the traditional practice and still is by and large. Gender relationships may start with men assuming traditional dominant roles and women being submissive. But the relationship can then move on to the equity model which helps the two partners by reducing the traditional load of expected work on women and can make their relationship more intimate. But the equity model need not be the last phase. The couple can then move into the unity model which affords still more intimacy.

In the unity model there are two possible directions, one valid the other destructive. If equity is given up for unity, which of the two partners should be giving up their equal power under equity? If the woman gives up equity, then the couple falls back into the traditional dominance model they started with in which man dominates woman in socially prescribed ways. On the other hand if the man gives up equity power in decision making, then they move forward to the unity model that leads to greater intimacy, growth, and mutual support. This conclusion will be reviewed in detail in our class discussions throughout the semester.

11.3.3 Sensorimotor, Cognitive, and Affective Conjunction

Consider the cognitive and affective domains of gender interaction in marriage. For instance, a wife's depth of perception of a situation (her affective self) contrasts with that of a man's, but the difference is such as to be reciprocal with it. But if the man feels competitive with her, as in the traditional and equity models, their difference in perception is then nonreciprocal, incompatible, or opposite. Similarly, a woman's cognitive self complements that of a man, which is why they find each other's ideas interesting and stimulating. A man ordinarily resists the idea that the woman who loves him has a deeper perception of his feelings and motivations than he has himself. Women have this greater awareness of feelings than men due to the confluence of biology, socialization, experience, interest, and spiritual structure.  Hence the unity through reciprocity model requires that the man give up equity power and give in to the woman's way of understanding. This means that the man would voluntarily agree to let the woman play the lead role in decision making when it comes to their relationship areas.

For example, a wife might request that her husband no longer talk to an old girl friend of his. She feels very strongly about it. She perceives it  from within, as if it was instinct. In other words, she may not be able to give a rational explanation of where it comes from or why she feels so strongly about it. She tells her husband all this, yet he rejects it because he thinks differently about it. He feels a certain loyalty to many of his old friends and doesn't want to give that up, especially since she can't explain her demand in a way that makes sense to him. He and his old girl friend do not have any romantic feelings for each other,  so his wife (or current girl friend) should not be jealous. So they argue.

This stand off puts a hold on the inward (affective) growth of the relationship. She may not say this to him, and sometimes she may not be clearly aware of it, but within herself she knows that the relationship is not growing deeper. She hopes it can be amended but for now it's like a broken leg you can't use for walking. She feels neutralized by her partner's independent stance. He has excluded her and taken away her right or opportunity to make him change his stand into reciprocity, conjunction, unity, oneness in mind and body. He is keeping an area of his love sealed off to her. He reserves his affectional territory for something in which she has no direct input. She is kept on the outide.

This situation can be better understood if we look at it in more detail as to what's going on. In their relationship the man and the woman are interacting at the three levels of the self: sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective. The process of forming a marital unity involves the conjunction of the threefold self of each partner. The sensorimotor self of the man and the woman are conjoined first as shown by the activities they enjoy doing together--eating, playing, embracing, talking. These activities involve mostly the "external" physical self of the partners. It is called external because it is easily visible to them and to others like friends, parents, and neighbors. We can call this phase sensorimotor conjunction. In this phase the man often takes the lead and exerts a dominant role. The woman follows in order to keep the relationship going. Her motive is higher than the man's. His motive is to please himself; her motive is to continue the relationship going to a deeper level.

At the same time the cognitive self of the two partners are interacting. At this level of the interaction, the woman takes the lead. She strives to take the man's perspective, to learn his sense of humor, to memorize the details of his life that he reveals, to acquire the reasoning style he uses. Her motive in all this cognitive effort is to harmonize with the man and please him. She understands instinctively, and sometimes explicitly or consciously, that by making him laugh and pleasing him by how she thinks, she will succeed in conjoining the man to herself. The man is normally focused on himself, on his ideas, and he is pleased when she demonstrates that she knows those ideas. He is not thinking of her perspective, while she is constantly trying to analyze his perspective. Obviously, this differential effort and focus gives the woman a superior perception and understanding of the relationship, that is, of the process of conjoining. This cognitive communication of ideas between them can be called cognitive conjunction.

Cognitive conjunction is more visible than affective conjunction because it comes out in their agreements or disagreements. Long after sensorimotor conjunction has been established, and after cognitive conjunction has been operating for awhile in the relationship, the woman strives even more intensely to conjoin the man to herself at the affective level. She understands from instinct, and sometimes explicitly or consciously, that the relationship won't be perfect until they achieve affective conjunction. This doesn't just mean saying "I love you" even if it is meant sincerely. Affective conjunction means that the man has aligned his feelings with his woman. In other words he has given up his male prerogatives left to him by society and tradition. Society allows a man to retain affective independence from the woman he is married to. He is expected to provide for her needs, to support her in her endeavors, and to be decent to her. But he is not expected to become dependent on her for his feelings, motives, ambitions. He is expected to lover her and be loyal to her, but not to give up his own independent feelings and strivings. Affective independence is the norm for a man in most societies.

In contrast, social and cultural norms require a woman not only to love her mate but to be dependent on him for her feelings and emotions. For example, if she loves Italian food and he hates it, she is expected to give up her old loves and adopt his loves. He expects it and sees it as a sign of loyalty to him. If she complies with this expectation, he feels bonding with her. Note that a man feels bonding or conjunction when the woman becomes dependent on him in her threefold self. But this kind of bonding is not true conjunction and cannot lead to unity.

In the region of the heart, woman rises far above the man in perception, understanding, and consciousness. This is the result of her biological, rational, and spiritual nature. Therefore the gender syntax that produces unity involves the husband becoming affectively dependent on the wife. This runs contrary to his socialization and philosophy, so he puts up enormous resistance--that the woman has to overcome if they are going to achieve unity. Both men and women have three natures or levels of operation of life: a biological nature or self, a rational nature or self, and a spiritual nature or self. By the principle of differentiation and reciprocity it is clear that men and women differ in their biological nature, they differ in their rational nature, and they differ in their spiritual nature. Biological differences between them are obvious in the anatomy and appearance of their physical body. Rational differences between men and women result in the reciprocal orientation and focus they each have.  When a man's cognitive focus is reciprocal to the woman's cognitive focus, they can conjoin. To conjoin means that they share parts of it, or all of it.

But sharing doesn't mean that they are similar because a man and a woman have different functions for their thinking. A woman might say or think X and a man might say or think X yet they are not thinking the identical thing. A woman uses thinking in the relationship for the purpose of achieving unity because that's the way she defines herself, while a man uses his thinking for the purpose of retaining independence because that's the way he defines himself. He wants her to give up her cognitive independence and think like him. This is impossible for nothing in a man can be like anything in a woman, and vice versa. On the other hand, he can give up his affective independence so that his thinking now responds not just to his own needs and purposes, but to her needs and purposes as well. In this way the man's thinking is elevated to a new level of consciousness, intelligence, and wisdom. But when he refuses to give up his affective independence, his thinking remains where it has always been, unable to achieve the higher levels of his own humanity. It's obvious therefore that "giving up" affective independence is not losing something but gaining a whole new level of life for a man.

When a husband is committed to giving up affective independence, he is conjoined to his wife at the inmost or affective level. This is a spiritual conjunction that lasts forever. It has a built in dynamics for dissolving disagreements. Not a single disagreement can arise between them no matter what. This is because they have learned a reciprocal style of interacting at all three levels of the self.

Sensorimotor conjunction is the mental state of husband and wife in which their sensations and movements are mutually and reciprocally interdependent. The pleasures they enjoy are connected to making the partner happy. For instance, what the husband enjoys most is to keep his wife feeling comfortable, and her desires or preferences satisfied. Sensorimotor independence exists when the husband insists on his own comforts and pleasures. His focus is then on himself, not his wife. It's common to observe in public couples walking together. More often than not you will see the woman carrying a greater load than the man. Maybe a child and a big bag, while the man has his hands free. Or at airports you see the woman carry two big bags and the man she is with is carrying one bag. These interactions result from the man's sensorimotor independence. Often husbands will satisfy their sexual appetites for years and never care enough to discover anything about his wife's appetites or satisfactions.

It helps to contrast clearly the differences between the affective and sensorimotor parts of the threefold self. Often people use the word "feeling" when they mean thinking (cognitive self), and vice versa. For example, people say, "I feel that we should wait longer" when they are discussing what they think. Sometimes feelings (affective) are confused with sensations (sensorimotor). For example, "I feel hot flashes coming on" or "I feel so tired." In both cases it is not the feelings (affective) that are discussed but the sensations (sensorimotor).

The sensorimotor area of the threefold self includes these primary features of our everyday life:

• physical pleasures (all five senses), or their opposites

• enjoyable sensations and movements, or their opposites

• mental pleasures and delightful experiences, or their opposites

• healthy well being and feeling good physically, or the opposite

• being physically attracted to someone, or the opposite

• feeling calm, cool, and collected, or the opposite

• coordinating one's movements with partner, or the opposite

• etc.

The affective area of the threefold self includes these primary features of our everyday life:

• feeling good about the situation, or the opposite

• feeling hesitant or resistant, or the opposite

• feeling afraid or scared, or the opposite

• feeling connected, or the opposite

• striving to reach a goal, or the opposite

• accepting someone or thing, or the opposite

• perceiving (feeling, sensing) from within that something is right and good, or not

• feeling guilty, embarrassed, ashamed, regretful, or not

• etc.

Do you get the difference? Note that the affective always comes first in the sequence of our behavior. We do something because we are motivated to do it. We are motivated to do something to achieve a particular goal. Every goal is defined by what we want or desire or prefer to happen. Therefore all human action starts from a feeling -- what we want to happen, together with a goal that satisfies what we want.

Once we have a feeling, motive, or particular goal we desire to happen, the next behavior in sequence is the cognitive self. Our thinking operations suddenly begin to figure out a plan or method of proceeding that will bring about the desired goal, and thereby satisfy the feeling. It is the feeling that motivates, guides, and directs the thinking, keeping the sequence of mental operation focused in a coherent way to lead to the goal state. For example, we become aware that we are thinking about the candy bar in our pocket or purse. What made your thoughts go in that direction? It had to be some kind of feeling, like sensing hunger in the stomach (sensorimotor) which became the occasion for a desire to satisfy it. This desire or feeling then awakened our thoughts and memories to think about the candy bar.

Once the feeling (desire) and the thinking (candy bar in pocket or purse) are placed together or united, the hand starts reaching for the candy bar or the legs start waking to the kitchen (sensorimotor).

But then you stop the hand or the legs. Wait. I'm on a diet and I want to lose weight. Remember? What's happening here? It's another feeling (desire, motive) that takes over and this new feeling now directs the thinking and the moving in another direction.

So whatever we do all day long minute by minute, has to do with sequences and loops of feelings, thoughts, and sensorimotor executions of them. By self-witnessing or self-monitoring ourselves in a systematic and persistent way,  we gradually learn to distinguish between the actions of the threefold self and how the affective hierarchy of our feelings dominates and rules our thinking and doing. Most people prior to self-witnessing are not fully aware of the feelings they have and their relative hierarchy of power over the threefold self. What we don't know about ourselves, we cannot control or modify even if they are maladaptive and the source of negative results. It is to everyone's advantage to get to know the hierarchy of feelings they have in the course of their day.

Here is a summary table to memorize:

See if you can follow the themes in each cell in the above Table. Try to see how these names and descriptions apply to your experience with couples, partnerships, and marriages:

• yourself

• parents

• friends

• movies

• song lyrics

• jokes

• group practices, norms, and expectations.

Review what you know about each of these. Are the Table cells helpful in organizing and characterizing what you are observing when you examine these areas of daily life?

As you continue studying the following Sections, be sure to integrate them in your mind with this Table. You actually need to integrate all the Tables in these Lecture Notes, and then you will see clearly how all this perspective can give you a rational understanding of marriage. You might want to print out just the Tables, and study them together, trying to integrate them into your understanding.

11.3.4  Unity Model in Marriage:  Ennead Chart of Growth Steps

This is Table 1a (READ TABLE FROM BOTTOM UP)

All ennead charts are read from bottom up. This ennead chart ("ennead" = nine), shows that there are nine succeeding phases for achieving unity in marriage. Note that the nine cells are generated when you keep track of what happens to the threefold self of husband and wife as they progress towards unity. It would be very beneficial for you to memorize this chart so you can reproduced it on paper, and then mentally picture it as you think about these issues. Try to make a mental picture of the chart as you read the following explanations. If you make sure you fully understand it, you will be able to use the chart in your everyday thinking about relationships, your own, or those of others.

Note that that the changes are conceptualized in relation to the model or philosophy the partners have. The "dominance" model often describes the husband's attitude towards his wife, and this agrees with the prevailing cultural norms in most societies on this earth. Women are socialized to accept this male dominance perspective and many women come to see it as normal, and even good. Some women however, reject it. They demand that the husband switch to the "equity" model, which means that he can't just make decisions by himself for their joint life. They have to consult each other and resolve differences with a consensus with which both can live and feel comfortable.

First, the threefold self of the husband and wife must conjoin themselves at the usual dominance level -- zones 1, 2, 3. Then they can grow further together by conjoining their threefold self again, but under the equity model -- zones 4, 5, 6. Many husbands resist the equity model and prefer to go back to the dominance model. But if he changes his mind and adopts the new model for their interactions, then the couple can grow still further towards fully being conjoined in their threefold self. Eventually couples can move into the unity stages -- zones 7, 8, 9. This happens when the husband adopts a new way of interacting with his wife.

In the unity model of interaction (zones 7, 8, 9), the husband allows the wife's inner wisdom to lead his own outward intelligence. This must be voluntary on his part and occurs when he becomes spiritually enlightened from a desire to be conjoined eternally to his wife. He is willing to let go of his own self, for the sake of a new self called the conjoint self. With this new self he is no longer independent. He can no longer choose to act on his own. Whatever he does, think, or strive for, he consults his wife first.

The husband must therefore acquire an accurate knowledge of his wife's feelings and emotions. Once he has internalized them, he can consult them whenever he acts, decides, or wants something. He is no longer a single self or individual. He is a half-person by himself, and is completed reciprocally by his wife. Together, the husband and wife, make one complete human being. When a couple reaches this spiritual level of union, they are in their eternal conjugial bliss in heaven. This can start while they are in this life, and continue later, in the afterlife.

The wife cannot impose the unity model on her husband by means of dominance, intimidation, or persuasion. He can refuse to go along with her whenever he pleases. There are few husbands who are willing to voluntarily subordinate their own outward intelligence to the wife's inner wisdom. It's a model they can achieve only with the husband's willingness to undergo much mental pain and self-denial. But those husbands who are willing to undergo the change, can form a true and perfect reciprocal union with their wife. This is a spiritual state that lasts forever into the afterlife called "heaven." (For more information on this topic, you can consult the 459 Lecture Notes, on the Web at:  www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic

The first phase of each model (zones 1, 4, 7) involves the sensorimotor self of the two partners as the central focus of their relationship. Their affective and cognitive self subordinate themselves to the sensorimotor self as a couple. They get along fine and enjoy each other company, but only so long as they retain focus on the sensorimotor level. For instance, they do things together that involve their physical enjoyment and fun--eating, touching, holding, dancing, driving, playing games, watching movies, listening to music, talking, etc., and sometimes, dealing with children and their immediate physical needs.

In the dominance model (zones 1, 2, 3), the relationship is governed cognitively by tradition and affectively by reward and punishment. The two partners are only externally conjoined. Their life together as a unique couple centers on what choices they make together at the sensorimotor level (zone 1). Even if they are physically together, they are not together at the cognitive and affective levels of conjoining. They are separated or "disjoined" in their thinking and in their feeling. Their thinking is dictated by tradition and family. Their feeling is governed by being rewarded or punished by the other one, depending on what happens. It is normal in the traditional dominance model for a man and a woman to make love and feel close, then a little while later they can argue about something and express hostility. This proves that they are not united in feeling because when a couple is united in feeling it is impossible for one to express hostility to the other. Hostility separates and destroys internal unity, even if later, it is followed by making up and expressing love. This alternating flip-flop state of love and hostility marks the typical behavior in the dominance and equity models (zones 1 through 6).

The equity model is associated with the "modern" outlook that young people in many traditional cultures adopt as a new philosophy of relationship between men and women, thereby taking a step away from the traditional dominance model of their elders. In the equity model of marriage, all responsibilities and duties of husband and wife are shared through negotiation and agreement between each other. This leads to a cognitive level of conjunction between a man and a woman (zone 5), since they have to negotiate by arguments why one partner should do X and Y and the other partner should do A and B. Cognitive unity is gradually achieved through such a process, as long as both partners are sincere rather than just manipulative.

While the focus in the dominance level is sensorimotor conjunction (zone 1), the focus in the equity model is cognitive conjunction (zone 5). The equity model is essentially a political power sharing agreement. It tends to create similar ideas and beliefs in the two partners, a similar reasoning process. This cognitive conjunction makes the sensorimotor interaction better than before. They get along better, agree more, can talk it out and influence each other's thinking and decisions. Because of this their sensorimotor interactions (zone 4) are more compatible--they enlarge and diversify their physical activities and enjoyment of each other. But they still argue. The wife still gets abused from time to time when the husband gives himself permission to explode or take a stance that hurts her. The husband still resists and resents the wife's attempt to influence him, to change his traits and habits that she finds are in the way of a still closer relationship.

There is one more phase the woman wants and needs--their affective conjunction. This would create unity, for which a woman craves for instinctively, biologically, consciously, knowingly. Nothing less than that can completely fulfill her. The wife has a mental picture of the conjoint self where the focus is on affective and inmost conjunction. She can be free of the fear that any time her husband can jump on her and hurt her feelings. She wants her husband to give in to her inner wisdom in all three domains of the self. She wants her husband to love her affections and wisdom more than he loves his own. In this way she will be first in his mind rather than himself.

The wife desires to be first in her husband's mind not because she is selfish and thinking of her comfort or ego. She is thinking of the conjoint self and she wants that true and perfect unity that lasts to eternity. She realizes in her inner wisdom that acquiring a conjoint self is more important for her husband than his way of looking at things. His way of looking at things cannot create an eternal relationship.

The third and inmost phase of conjunction achieves affective unity (zone 9) and greatly improves the cognitive and sensorimotor interactions at the same time (zones 7 and 8). Not only are the two partners conjoined in their sensorimotor and cognitive self, but now they at last become conjoined in their affective self--their feelings and motivations. This level of conjunction is not possible without both partners abandoning the prior two models. The focus at this third level must be the affective self, and the other two are then consequences of this inmost conjunction.

By abandoning the traditional dominance model (zones 1, 2, 3), the husband no longer sees himself as entitled to being treated in a certain way by the woman. Afterwards, by abandoning the equity model (zones 4, 5, 6), the husband no longer sees equal power and responsibility as a good focus for their relationship. The equity focus leads to disagreements, and even the agreements may not be fully suitable to the woman. Instead the man now adopts a new philosophy or model for their relationship. Note in the chart that zones 1, 5, 9 are bolded. This is the path that represents the progressive growth of the conjoint self. First the engaged or married couple is focusing on their sensorimotor conjunction (zone 1) in the dominance model. Then they focus on cognitive conjunction (zone 5) in the equity model. Finally, they focus on affective conjunction (zone 9) in the unity model.

In the unity model, the husband understands rationally that gender unity is based on differentiation of traits that are reciprocal. This is not something to be negotiated about but recognized and lived. The husband begins to see that his affections or loves--what he likes and dislikes, are often incompatible with his wife's affections--what she likes and dislikes. For example, he would like to keep his male friends even after his wife shows her opposition because she doesn't like the influence they have on him, which is to cause a separation between her and her husband. He resists by denying that they are having a bad influence, or by insisting that marriage doesn't mean that everything that came prior must stop, or by accusing her of being over controlling or jealous. By means of these tactics of resistance, the man is able to keep separate from her and remain disjoined at the affective level. Their relationship remains at the equity or traditional dominance level and cannot grow inward.

The husband can think rationally about it and figure it out. This is called spiritual enlightenment because he can have this realization only if he thinks of his wife as an eternal partner, not just "until death do us part." He can then decide to give up his affective independence without feeling that he is losing something. He can have the vision or realization that heaven in eternity requires affective conjunction between them. Now the husband has a new rule for himself: he will keep himself from ever disagreeing with her about any of her demands, requests, pleadings, urgings, or expectations. These are all the ways the wife reveals her affections to her husband. He can see rationally that by subordinating his own affections to hers, they can form a unity, which will then greatly enhance their cognitive and sensorimotor conjunction attained previously. Now they will truly be of "one mind" and "one spirit." The husband experiences enormous resistance to this course of action, and it takes years of effort for a man to stop relapsing into the equity or dominance mode of interacting with his wife.

The unity model of marriage actually refers to all three models together. No couples start directly at the third level called unity (zones 7, 8, 9). Unity or inner threefold conjunction, is a developmental outcome of prior phases of relationship. Further, a couple often interacts at different levels at different times and in different areas of their relationship. Theoretically it is possible for a couple to be active in all nine zones at different times. But this kind of instability and inconsistency does not allow true inner conjunction or unity. There may be times when the couple reaches a unity level, but it doesn't last. Only when the lower levels of interaction (dominance, equity) are mostly abandoned and no longer occur, can true unity be achieved as a lifestyle and permanent state of eternal happiness and peace. A useful application of the ennead model is to use it as a map for identifying and locating the current levels of interaction between a husband and wife.

This is Table 1b (READ TABLE FROM BOTTOM UP)

Table 1b above identifies the psychological characteristics or "mentality" that creates a preference for one of the three models. The dominance model is called level 1 because it tends to be first in the couple's development. "Corporeal" mentality refers to the style of personality that focuses almost exclusively on physical goals and satisfactions. It is a materialistic outlook, but even more so than the "sensuous" mentality of level 2. The corporeal mentality reflects the level of operation of the threefold self -- our feeling states, our thinking style, and our overt acts and sensations (zones 3, 2, 1). If you inspect the Table you will see how each zone of the ennead is defined by the marginal entries. The by three marginal entries (columns by rows) equals 9 cells or "zones" of interaction between the threefold self and the three levels of human mentality.

Let's apply Table 1b to an actual behavioral area in marriage: sexual behavior. In Table 1c below, let's enter a characterization of each of the nine zones of sexual interaction.

This is Table 1c  (READ TABLE FROM BOTTOM UP)

In order to understand the chart better replace the characterizations with your own examples of sexual behavior in a couple you know (real or TV). Then do two more on the topic of "money" and "lifestyle."

This is Table 1d  (READ TABLE FROM BOTTOM UP)

Table 1d above helps you to distinguish more clearly the kind of relationship that married partners are in when they model their behavior in accordance with the the three levels of mentality.

The corporeal mentality of the dominance model (level 1) involves the partners at a general level, thus more distant to each other than the equity or unity models. Husband and wife relate to each other at a general level. It has physical and mental intimacy, but only of the external or outward self -- how one appears to others. Inside, what one actually thinks and feels, may be the opposite. When tradition and family govern or dictate the interaction possibilities between husband and wife, their relationship remains at the general level.

But with the equity model (level 2) the married partners can interact at the personal level, independently of tradition and family. They get closer to each other mentally, not just physically. They get to know each other's opinions and preferences and they take turns agreeing with one another as a way of maintaining peace and avoiding warfare. Their relationship is at the personal level and can get more and more personal, but it cannot get to be all encompassing for every particular aspect of their personality and social make up. They prefer to remain at a certain distance in their intimacy in areas where they both agree to some "legitimate" independence -- e.g., how they think about certain things like politics or religion, what is the best and what the next best of something is, what friends and hobbies they are allowed to have separately from each other, etc.

All these negotiated agreements and mutual allowances of independence in the equity model, are banished when the husband moves up to the equity model of interaction. The rational mentality of this model prompts the partners to be intolerant of any differences between them. They strive to eliminate any love, affection, desire, or goal that is antagonistic or independent of the other partner's loves and goals. In this way they have a mutual love that expresses itself as the constant striving or motivation by each to make the other one happy through what one can do for them.

 In the dominance model of interaction the wife is persuaded to make the husband happy by doing things for him the way he wants and directs. This is a general level of relationship based on a corporeal or physicalistic mentality (level 1). In the equity model the two partners take turns doing for the other what is wanted or requested. This is a personal level of relationship based on sensuous appearances that each partner gives to the other about oneself. In the unity model of rational mentality the husband is enlightened spiritually to realize that perfect marriage unity depends on exchanging his independent loves and goals for joint loves and goals. He thus acquires a conjoint self that is dependent, compatible, and integrated with his wife. In this way out of two separate individuals, they become one conjoint individual. This is the highest state of life humans can reach in which they are stable, happy, wise, useful,  and productive beyond anything possible otherwise.

11.3.5  Male Dominance Model of Marriage

One of the books on the national best seller list today as I write this (April 2004), is The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands by Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the popular call in talk show host whose voice of morality in relationships has been influential. The book jacket says that she is the author of Six New York Times Bestsellers. I use her book in my course on Gender Relationships in Marriage as a rich source for studying the attributes of the dominance model in marriage.

Chapter 6 is entitled "What's Sex?" and opens with three letters by husbands who have written to "Dr. Laura."

I think women use their bodies as tools for controlling men. Once married, they go on to other tools. It seems to me we have this backwards. Girls ought to be more modest, and wives ought to be less so--around their husbands. Instead single women show thighs and breasts, and wives dress like Eskimos. I saw a lot more skin in my dating life that I do as a married man--and I was a virgin when I married!"
Bob

My wonderful wife has put it best: "Sex is to a husband what conversation is to a wife. When a wife deprives her husband of sex for days, even weeks on end, it is tantamount to his refusing to talk to her for days, even weeks." Think of it that way, wives, and realize what a deleterious impact enforced sexual abstinence has on a good man who is determined to remain faithful."
Herb

We need more sex. Once a day is fine.
Steve

Dr. Laura quotes these three letters at the head of the chapter to make the same point she makes in every chapter, as echoed in the title of the book: which appears in the header line on every page: The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. Let's analyze the assumptions contained in the statements these three men are making about their wives and which Dr. Laura has chosen to make her point about how wives should listen to their husbands about what they need to be properly taken care of, and in this chapter, it is about sex--what kind of sexual behavior wives owe their husbands if the marriage is going to succeed and not break up.

Assumptions of the male dominance model contained in the three letters:

(1) women use their bodies as tools for controlling men
(2) married women have less interest in sex than unmarried
(3) wives ought not to be sexually modest with their husbands
(4) unmarried women are "girls" who dress to show their thighs and breasts
(5) wives dress like Eskimos at home, hiding their thighs and breasts
(6) wives should think that when they say no to sex they are hurting a good man who wants to be faithful
(7) when wives say no to sex they are depriving their husbands and are enforcing abstinence
(8) it's mean for a wife to say no to sex--it is like a husband refusing to have a conversation with her
(9) men need more sex and wives should provide it

There are many more assumptions in the male dominance model, but these are the nine that permeate the logic of the three notes Dr. Laura is quoting. The general theme expressed here is that a the man has the right to expect his wife to have sex with him when he wants it. Dr. Laura chides married women for not taking care of their appearance to please their husbands. A few days ago I listened to one of Dr. Laura's radio broadcasts. A woman called in and shared her distress over her husband's complaints and criticisms of her because she didn't want to comply with his excessive sexual demands. He insists that she has sex with him every day, and sometimes three times a day. Furthermore, he criticizes her for not consenting each time to have her legs up in the air during intercourse. She said it was an uncomfortable position for her, but since she has had her second child, he insists that that's the only way he can enjoy himself. What should she do?

Dr. Laura told her she needs to show more enthusiasm about their sex and take an active role. She should not have sex with him in a passive subdued mode because he gets bored with that and since he brings home the paycheck, goes out into the world to earn a living to support her and the children, he is a good husband and she should treat him well. Dr. Laura suggested that she make a reservation at a motel and surprise him by spending a night of sex with him. Dr. Laura often reports that women write to her to say how grateful they are when their husband's attitude has changed for the better, after they started showing them appreciation and pleasing them

The unity model of marriage focuses on the mental union between husband and wife as the primary interaction, while the physical interaction is secondary. In other words, sex is the secondary outcome of the primary mental union. The male dominance model focuses on physical sex as the primary thing and mental union as secondary. The masculine model is to have sex first, and second to get to know one another. A husband sometimes says mean things to his wife, deprecating things about her appearance, calling her names, yelling, getting angry, walking away, giving the silent treatment, refusing to do something he promised, etc. Some minutes, hours, or days later, the husband feels better and wants to make up by having sex with her. If she refuses, he is angered and expresses resentment, accusing her of selfishness or coldness. From the perspective of the unity model, this type of behavior by the husband is self-centered, cruel, and destructive of the internal bonds of the marriage.

From the male dominance model one might argue, like Dr. Laura, that a husband who is good, deserves to be treated in the way he wants to because this is his need and the wife who loves her husband, should take care of his need, whether sexual or otherwise. I call this the blackmail argument because it puts the woman into a double bind, the result of which is to destroy the internal bonds of the married partners.

I witnessed a similar attitude practiced by Dr. Phil, a popular TV host of counseling sessions with married couples. A common issue he handles is the husband's complaint that his wife's sex drive is lower than his, and sometimes nonexistent. Dr. Phil confronts the wife -- Why aren't you giving him the sex he wants? or, What have you got against sex? or, You need to realize that sex is a necessary component of a good relationship, and other such statements, by which he faults the wife for not letting her husband molest her sexually. From a woman's inner feeling, being compelled to have sex with her husband when she is aversive to it, is like prostituting herself or at least, to be a slut. She doesn't want her choice being taken away from her as to how she should feel towards her husband. She knows what she is feeling and it hurts her for others to try to convince her that she is wrong in her feelings.

What Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura and the other male dominant therapists need to do is to start with the husband, not the wife. Cherchez le husband. In other words, start objectively by going directly to the source of the wife's aversion towards having sex with him. This is objectively the husband's responsibility. If sex in marriage is to be intimate and loving, rather than exploitative and slutty, it is the husband who needs to find ways to make the wife feel like being intimate with him. This is the husband's responsibility entirely, one hundred percent. The equity model would say that this is a fifty-fifty responsibility. One of the first things Dr. Phil says is "You need to negotiate," by which he means in this case, that the wife should give up her busy schedule and make room for being intimate with her husband. Then, Dr. Phil usually turns to the husband, as an afterthought it seems to me, to tell him that he must help too. He turns to her and says, "You must learn to say No to activities. Maybe you can work less hours. Maybe you don't need to do as much as you are doing. But you must find time for sex."

This is what I call sanctioning sexual blackmail. I call it this because I have learned that this is the woman's perspective on the issue. She feels herself compelled to have sex with her husband while she is aversive to it. She hates the idea of having him do his thing in her while she is dead tired, tense, sleepy, and resentful like hell at him. There is the point that Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura do not ever focus on, as it it were a nonexistent issue for them. And perhaps it is, from the mentality of the male dominance model (see the Tables in the Field Observations below.).

Back to the main point that needs be focused on in marriage therapy or counseling: It is the husband who needs help in understanding his contribution to his wife's aversion at having sex with him.

The husband is normally totally unaware that he has created this sexual aversion in his wife. Note that few wives ever allow themselves to express their feelings and say to their husbands, "You disgust me. I hate the way you touch me. I hate how you know nothing about me, nor are you interested." If a wife were to express this feeling to her husband, he would likely turn impotent with her for all times. A woman knows from inner perception what not to tell him about her feelings  though they are real to her.

If I were giving the advice, I would try to bring out these two steps:

(1) Teach the husband that things can be fixed if he accepts the idea that he is the cause of his wife's aversion to having sex with him. 

This is the case even if she says that it is because she is tired, or has too much work to get through, or there is no time or privacy, or some other justification. The  justification given by the wife may also be true, but the unspoken part is that she hates being sexually intimate with him and doesn't want to do it for sexual blackmail, which would make her feel like a slut slave and a worthless person unfit to be a mother or full fledged citizen. By saying No to him, she is protecting her dignity, freedom, and sanity. This is why it is so hard on women to have to be told by a marriage therapist that they should agree to more sex or give up on the marriage lasting. This idea is terribly threatening and disturbing, hence all the more cruel. The woman has to face all this cruelty and abuse from the male dominance model and oppose all of tradition and all of society, that are behind her husband's side and are all telling her, You must give him more sex, you must.

Once the husband accepts and understands this sexual blackmail feature of his demands, he can begin solving his situation.

(2) Teach the husband on how to obtain facts from his wife regarding all the ways he turns her off and makes her feel ant-sexual towards him.

One of the sharpest and most cruel of stabs a husband delivers to his wife is when he shows her by his behavior that he discounts her observations in comparison to his own. This is one of the most destructive habits to marriage in the male dominance model. The woman's opinion or explanation is driven away, banished from the subjective world of male intelligence. A man generally wants to discount a woman's opinion or perspective whenever it doesn't agree with the male intelligence or perspective. This attack is so pernicious to the woman's well being that she exhausts herself emotionally trying to make him listen. Inside of himself, the man laughs at her desperate attempts, confident in himself, knowing that she can't win, that he'll never give in on this point. Arrogantly he thinks that she should just give in and lay her own stubborn ideas to the side for the sake of his, and for the sake of their peace in marriage.

Here too, we can recognize the male dominance blackmail approach. He is saying to her, "Look woman, I've got you over the barrel. You need me, so you better just go along and give yourself a chance to be happy, or comfortable, or rich, or whatever." Again, this is blackmail for to go along with it, the woman has to give up her human rights -- her dignity, her freedom, and her sanity.

So the husband must be taught how to listen to his wife. For more on this, see the Readings under the "Doctrine of the Wife."

From the perspective of external bonds between the married partners, this blackmail double bind situation for the wife cannot be seen or understood. For instance, in the book and on her daily radio program, Dr. Laura often repeats to women callers that they should appreciate it and feel lucky when they have a good man for a husband. What is a good man? Dr. Laura specified that it is a man who is responsible enough to have a decent job, to support his family, and to want to spend time with his wife--going to Church, having sex, going for trips, talking to his wife, even helping out, although this last behavior is not a requirement for being a good husband. So when a husband comes home he expects and deserves his wife to cater to him, to his needs, to express appreciation for his courage in going out there into the world to earn a living for his family instead of running off with another woman.

When I read this in her book or hear it on her radio program, my mind screams in protest: What about the wife? Why doesn't  Dr. Laura mention the wife's hard work staying home taking care of everything--house, children, bills, pets, errands, after school lessons for the children, remembering birthdays for everyone, taking care of emergencies, going through pregnancy, taking all the nastiness and grossness her husband dishes out daily, etc. Why is Dr. Laura ignoring this?

I know if she read this she would protest that of course she does acknowledge the work of women--after all she has been a mother and a wife for many years, and she has been talking to women for many years.

But this doesn't take care of the problem I'm raising. In order to see the problem Dr. Laura will have to look at the male dominance model from the perspective of the equity model, something she may be familiar with, but doesn't think much of, not enough to make it part of her advice or talk. And yet she would have to give it the positive bias, which means to acknowledge the idea that the equity model may actually be superior to the male dominance model. With this acknowledgement, the argument can be examined and evaluated.

The equity model requires that every concept applied to the husband must simultaneously be applied to the wife--not later or in the next part of the discussion or in some past discussion. For instance, if Dr. Laura advises the wife that she be appreciative, she must at the same time advise the husband to be appreciative. This she does not do, ever. In her mind and in her understanding these two things are separate.. And this is the way one thinks from the male dominance perspective.

Dr. Laura is against being unfair to women in marriage, but she draws the line of fairness on the male side, not in the middle. Why do so many men and women think this way about marriage? Because it is traditional and part of one's culture and upbringing. Most people start the marriage relationship with a male dominance perspective.

Now what happens if we switch over to the equity model perspective?

What would Dr. Laura have to say to give advice from the perspective of the equity model? If she is talking to a man who is complaining that his wife doesn't greet him at the door with a warm smile and all pretty and nice smelling, Dr. Laura usually first finds out if he is a good husband. By this she means whether he brings home the family paycheck and has no extra-marital affairs. Then she agrees with him that his wife needs to learn how to show her appreciation for his being a good husband, something he deserves to receive from her if she respects him. That's it. She doesn't ask the man if and how he shows his appreciation of her being a good wife. That's because Dr. Laura doesn't define a good wife in the same way as she defines a good husband. A woman does not receive the epithet of "good wife" for all she does by taking care of the kids, the house, the bank, the car, and the driving to the ballet and soccer classes. This is something the wife  should be doing anyway -- according to the traditional dominance mentality as expressed by Dr. Laura. In order to be called a "good wife" she also needs to show her appreciation for her husband being good--doll herself up before he gets home, keep the children quiet, have dinner ready, and later, give him sex in the way he wants it.

Why the double standards?

This appears to be a necessary part of the male dominance model. I have observed this with other "media therapists" that I get to see on TV. Almost all of them are men and they operate from a perspective of male dominance. One of the most popular shows in this genre is "Dr. Phil" McGraw, and I've watched him many times deal with problems couples bring up. He talks to him, then to her. He lets him off easy, hardly ever challenging any of his statements, and smiling and being friendly with him. Then he focuses in on the wife. Now he is not smiling, but acting confrontational and intimidating. He grills her and constantly argues to get her to accept the blame for the marriage problems. Dr. Phil acts like he wants the wife to feel that she is the one who is at fault, she is the one who has to change and give up this or that expectation she has of her husband.

Another popular author and national seminar leader on marriage counseling is Dr. John Gray, known for his best seller book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (Harper Collins, 1992) and several other such books widely used in his "relationship seminars." I saw him several years ago appearing on the highly popular "Oprah" Winfrey afternoon television show. He was telling the audience that a wives should give their husbands sex every day, or as often the men want it. Oprah looked nonplussed: "You mean they should have sex even if they don't want to?" John Gray nodding vigorously said, "Yes. You know, men get all jammed inside if they don't have it." and he was pointing to his abdomen with rapid circular movements of his hand, no doubt to indicate the "jamming up" part. Although Oprah normally has popular therapists on her show for several shows, she never had John Gray again after that episode.

It's astonishing to me that John Gray, Dr. Phil, and Dr. Laura can apparently have so many women among their supporters and regular audience. I explain this by the overwhelming pressure these women must feel from their husbands, boy friends, media experts, and social norms, all of which operate to support the male dominance model of interaction between men and women. Mothers raise their daughters to cater to their father and brothers, and when they begin to date, there is enormous pressure on them to "please" the boy they are going with, which means to engage in sexual behavior with him. During this interaction, the woman will have to constantly fight off the advancing pressure. The man, ardent on satisfying himself, steps over the line the woman has set down. The pressure turns into physical intimidation, threat, force, date rape, or, as we are discussing here, sexual blackmail.

According to this cruel social rule, the wife must give her husband sex at a rate that can be mutually negotiated, but she has no legitimate right to rely on her own feelings whether to have sex or when.

The male dominance model has from time immemorial promoted the sexual slavery of women. For example, in the Old Testament days and culture men could have several wives, and they were allowed to overtly discriminate among them and their children. Men were allowed to divorce their wives merely by openly declaring their wish. They could then banish them from the household and all other help or protection. The men could do this, and still receive the respect of the community. This mentality is still governing the lives of the majority of women on this planet.

To be objective and accurate we must make a distinction between two types of abuse of women stemming from the male dominance model: physical and mental. Where there is physical abuse, there is also mental abuse. But there may be mental abuse without physical abuse. This is by far the most common form of abuse among men in our society. Men with a domestic violence history are not respected in our society. they are disapproved of and sometimes sent to jail. On the other hand, the majority of well respected and up standing citizens of most communities in this country will tolerate and practice mental abuse against women.

Mental abuse of wives by husbands includes these very common forms of cruel and denigrating behaviors:

1. verbally expressing denigration and name calling

2. talking with a threatening voice or implication

3. maintaining silence and refusing to talk

4. walking out in anger

5. forcing physical intimacy without adequately preparing her for receptivity

6. making her feel neglected and not appreciated

7. showing disapproval or making her feel guilty about herself

8. deliberately trying to confuse her so he can get his way with her

9. breaking promises

10. interrupting to prevent her from talking

11. using her sexually than discarding her

12. keeping her from expressing her true self

13. keeping her from reaching her cherished goals

14. showing disinterest in her

15. exploiting her by making her work hard to do things for him

16. damaging her reputation by gossiping about her

17. and etc. (how many more can you add?)

Note especially item (5): forcing physical intimacy without adequately preparing her for receptivity. This is the type of mental abuse we've been discussing above regarding the advice offered by Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil, and John Gray, among others. Why is the wife not reciprocating her husband's sexual advances? The male dominance model puts the blame on the wife. The equity model puts the blame on both the husband and the wife. The unity model puts the blame on the husband.

From the perspective of the unity model it is the husband who stands in the way of mental intimacy with the wife. The wife desires mental intimacy with her husband but the husband finds that kind of intimacy aversive. He desires the sexual relief, which is self-centered, not couple centered, or wife-centered.

The unity model has a wife-centric focus. It assumes that the wife wants mental conjunction and intimacy, while the husband is fighting it, trying to retain his mental independence. For women, sexual intimacy is a spontaneous and delightful consequence of mental intimacy with the man she loves and to whom she wants to conjoin herself. So if the wife refuses sexual intimacy with her husband, it's because he doesn't want to be mentally intimate with her. This is the cause of her apparent coldness to his hot advances. He is self-centered, or genital-centered. He wants sexual relief. Like Dr. John Gray said, "a man gets all jammed up in there if he doesn't get enough sex from his wife." That's what the man is looking for, to get unjammed. An approach to counseling that is guided by the male dominance model, cooperates with the husband's perspective and advocates a methodology that I have called sexual blackmail.

The male dominance model therapists advocate that the wife should have sex with her husband even when he is unwilling to be mentally intimate with her.

The unity model sees this as sexual blackmail because it is not healthy for a woman to have sex with a man who is unwilling to be mentally intimate with her.

By unhealthy, I mean that her self-respect and human dignity is injured, in the same way that slaves were hurt psychologically by being denied their human rights. Also, like women who are forced into prostitution by a boyfriend to whom they must hand over the money, and who beats them if they refuse him.

Making a woman have sex with her husband even though she doesn't want, is cruel to the wife and harmful to the marriage relationship. The male dominance model therapists and husbands want to separate the issue of "mental intimacy" and "sexual intimacy." This is a purely masculine perspective. The feminine perspective is that first comes mental intimacy, then physical intimacy. Sex should be the outcome or consequence of mental intimacy. In prostitution or casual sex, there is no requirement for mental intimacy to be present, and in fact, all parties prefer that mental intimacy be left out of the sexual transactions. When men get married they bring into the marriage this male dominant perspective. Therapists like John Gray, among many others, support the husband's perspective, despite the fact that it is harmful to the wife and to the marriage. Ultimately it is harmful to the husband since this perspective inhibits real intimacy and the rich life of conjunction. He doesn't get to find out how warm and passionate and sweet his wife actually is when he develops mental intimacy with her.

11.3.5.1  How does the husband develop mental intimacy with his wife?

There are two steps.

First, he must stop adding to her mental distress.
Second, he must start easing her mental distress.

These are simple strategies, easy to understand and carry out by husbands. They are not done because husbands resist and refuse, soon after they find out all that is included in these two rules. A husband who follows these two rules, loves his wife. But a husband who refuses to practice these rules daily, does not love his wife.

Here is a list of common behaviors by a husband which keeps him from becoming mentally intimate with his wife.

1. blames his wife for something

2. expresses anger at his wife for something

3. insults his wife

4. says things unflattering about her

5. embarrasses her in front of others

6. refuses to talk about something she wants

7. says No to her despite her pleadings

8. ignores her when she walks into the room

9. fails to stop her anxieties when he can so by calling

10. forgets things that she wants him to remember

11. doesn't try to find out how she wants to be handled physically

12. lets her feel that he doesn't feel as responsible for housework and other marriage tasks, as he expects her to be

13. doesn't try to get rid of habits he has that she doesn't like

14. doesn't come to her rescue when he sees she is in distress (e.g., has too many things to do)

15. tries to get her to do things for him even when she rather not do them

16. gets insulted at her for saying something to him he doesn't like

17. tells her she is a nag for repeatedly reminding him of his broken promises

18. maintains relationships with men friends from which she feels excluded

19. lies to her and hides things from her

20. puts limits around certain issues where she is given no power of influence

21. makes sarcastic remarks that hurt her self-image

22. sees her being disturbed about something and does nothing about it

23. makes her accept his choice in something when she would prefer something else (e.g., ordering food, renting a movie, selecting a TV channel, going somewhere, buying something, etc.)

24. shows sexual interest in another woman (real life or media)

25. shows interest in pornography (videos, magazines, Web, Internet, dancers)

26. dampens her enthusiasm for something she proposes or anticipates

27. doesn't show interest in her hormonal or ob-gyn issues

28. allows himself to be gross in her presence (passing gas, burping, wolfing food down, bad breath, nose har, old clothes, etc.)

29. scolding her for spending money

30. not wanting to go shopping with her or acting impatient when going

31. etc. (how many more can you add?)

If I were a marriage counselor I would tell husbands that they need to monitor their interactions with the wife and note how many of these behaviors they commit in a day. They cannot do this on their own so they need to enlist the cooperation of their wife. She will help him identify the exchanges that make her feel separate from him instead of intimate. Husbands who do this sincerely and persistently will discover how passionate and sweet their wife can be. Never again will they complain that they are all jammed up sexually and prepared to get it by blackmail, intimidation, or guilt.

This morning on my way back from campus I listened to Dr. Laura on her daily radio program. A woman called in and asked for advice on what to do about her husband who has accused her of not caring about him because she is teaching Sunday School while he attends Church with the family. Her child is in the Sunday School class and that's one of the reasons she didn't feel like dropping the activity. Dr. Laura immediately accused her of not being a good wife because she is choosing some task she wants to do over her husband. Dr. Laura admonished the woman that she should appreciate the fact that her husband is willing to go to Church instead of going off to his golf on his own. The woman said she did appreciate that but sometimes he comes along and sometimes he doesn't want to, so she doesn't like the idea of dropping her Sunday School teacher activity, with her daughter in the class. Dr. Laura insisted the wife is being selfish and foolish. Do you want to break up your marriage? The days he doesn't want to go to Church, that's fine, just stay home with him.

Looking at this from the perspective of the equity and unity models one can see clearly that it is the husband who is being selfish and foolish in this situation. He doesn't respect her religion  if he feels he can stay home any time he doesn't feel like going, and then expects her to stay home too. Furthermore, he doesn't respect his wife since he is willing to put an end to her Sunday School teaching when she is so involved in it, and when it is a good thing to do, as indeed it is. He is being selfish for disregarding his wife's request that she continue to teach Sunday School on account of their child being there. Dr. Laura could have advised that the husband should join her in teaching Sunday School. He can sit in and help her manage the kids. He doesn't need to know the subject matter she is teaching. This would show his respect for his wife and family. But Dr. Laura would not be able to support such a solution as long as she is speaking exclusively from the male dominance model.

This is a common way in which husbands are unwilling to be mentally intimate with their wives. In this case, the husband was unwilling to show respect for her Sunday School involvement. This is a mental abuse. Dr. Laura could not see that it is mental abuse. Instead, she saw it as a reasonable demand on the part of the husband, and she put the blame on the wife for not going along with his demand. Now suppose the husband tries to have sex with his wife that week. He is demanding that she be physically intimate with him even though he is refusing to be mentally intimate with her. She is not only not turned on by his touchings, but she is turned off, and makes her feel dirty to have to give in to him for fear of his retaliations. If they should call Dr. Laura, or go consult Dr. Phil on his show, the wife would be told that she is being selfish or stupid for not having sex with such a good husband who brings home the paycheck and is interested in her instead of going to another woman. This is the mentality and level of moral reasoning of the male dominance model.

Recall this very important fact: We all start out with the male dominance model!

This is what we inherit culturally, spiritually, and socially, both men and women. Then, as women have more life experience and understanding, they quickly figure it out and try to do the best with the man they end up with. The men are resistant. They want to hold on to the male dominance model of interaction with women. They love it. And so they accuse the women of nagging them, of not accepting them for who they are, and they pressure the women to back off into silence and obedience. In other words, the men refuse to be mentally intimate even though they demand that the women be physically intimate with them. This puts the women into a hurtful double bind. It is a cruel thing to do to them, but the men do not care about this type of cruelty. They just want the women to keep quiet about it because it is too inconvenient for them to deal with.

But fortunately, many men come to discover that they like mental intimacy with women. They then have to voluntarily lay aside the culturally inherited tendency to hate and denigrate women. This is a giant battle within themselves, but eventually they can move on to the equity model. Their wives or girlfriends now experience some relationship relief. At last she has some chance now since he is allowing them to negotiate over many things. She now has some victories that make her life more comfortable, and draws them closer in mental intimacy. This feels to her like a big relief. but there continue to be problems because the man keeps falling back on blackmail methods of negotiating, which is a male dominance pattern within the equity model.

Eventually the wife will remain unfulfilled unless the husband is willing to begin acting from the unity model. This is the interactional position the wife wants with her husband and lover. She needs for him to follow the Rule of the Doctrine of the Wife (see Section xx), which is that, he always has to align his thoughts and feelings to agree with hers. Once he is steadily committed to this unity model of behavior, the wife begins to feel that she is winning, that her desire for conjunction is actually happening. Now at last she has a husband who wants to be mentally intimate with her. The sexual happiness of the couple then reaches a new high unknown to them before.

They are now soul-mates, on their way to conjugial love in eternal union in the immortality of their heaven.

11.3.5.2  Political Semantics of the Male Dominance Model

Built into the male dominance model, are hurtful persuasive strategies that may be called "political semantics" because their goal is to convince women to go along with their lower status in the marriage relationship. It's normal for the inner sense of freedom we all have to revolt against being enslaved. The political semantics of the male dominance model fabricates a web of arguments that appear rational on the surface, but are not, when you examine their logic carefully. Women are subjected to that faulty logic and pressure is put on them to go along with it, to stop rebelling against it, to keep the peace, not to upset the cart, to just take it as a necessary aspect of social living, etc. etc. -- arguments that are designed to neutralize and discourage women from demanding justice and respect.

The politics of semantics is a general strategy used in society to shape people's beliefs and attitudes, and to recast existing meanings to fit the political agenda. In gender politics, the agenda is to keep men in the dominance position relative to women. One of the consequence of this gender politics is the male dominance model in marriage relationships. It gives words and arguments a special meaning that is filled with male dominance assumptions and presuppositions. Until these presuppositions are made explicit it appears that the male dominance arguments have logical force and exert a strong influence on the thinking of women and their resultant submission. Women are taught these male dominant principles from their childhood onward and they are reinforced every day by the media one is exposed to. Women grow up talking to each other using male dominant concepts without knowing it. Those women know it who analyze the presuppositions of the male dominant arguments used against them by their loved ones and their marriage counselors, male and female. These women then realize that they are being enslaved by the men who say they love them. When they bring it up, the men deny it or don't want to talk about it. Thus the women are left with no recourse, and they feel desperate and lonely amidst the social business of their marriage.

Let us examine some of the principal strategies involved in the political semantics of the male dominance model.

11.3.5.2.1  "Nagging"

The word nagging is pejorative in meaning, and therefore when you apply that word to a woman, you are insulting her as a woman. You are insulting her femininity, thus trying to hurt her in her inner core -- very damaging, very pernicious, very evil. This is especially true because the term "nagging" is applied to something the wife is doing in the management role she was given by society and the husband. The wife was given the job of maintaining order in the domestic household and of keeping things going for the benefit of the family. Husbands want the political reputation of "helping" around the house, of sharing the chores. As long as they maintain this reputation, they have the power to keep enjoying their male prerogatives. The wife is intimidated into silence when she is reminded how lucky she is because she has a man who is willing to help and share the work load at home.

The wife knows this isn't true. The husband want only the reputation that they are sharing the load, but they have not taken on the responsibility for getting it down. They figure that since they are "volunteering" their services they should be appreciated by the wife -- whatever they are willing to offer her. She should be content with just the fact that he is willing to do his share. There is an unstated assumption here: ".... when it's not really his final responsibility." That's why she should be content -- according to this pernicious and false argument.

The wife points out that he is not really doing what he promises to help with, and that she has to repeatedly remind him of doing them, so that ultimately he is not taking final responsibility for them, but leaves that on her. In other words, the husband is not really easing her burden of responsibility yet he is claiming he is, and marriage counselors and social authorities agree with him and take his side against her. They show this one-sidedness by using the word "nagging" when the wife is making desperate attempts to get him to keep his promises, not just his reputation.

In my view, the rational and good thing to do would be to support the wife, to make the husband admit that he is not taking responsibility for doing the chores he agreed to do. He is not considering how the wife is affected when he postpones doing something he agreed to do. "Did you take the garbage out?" The husband should be taught by the marriage authority figures that the purpose of his helping with domestic tasks is to ease her mental burden and distress while having to manage the joint household. This must be the husband's primary focus: How can I ease her mental stress. His perspective is not helpful. He is thinking, "Well, I told her I'll take out the garbage. I will do it when I'm ready. She should just forget about the garbage. She should not nag me with it. I hate that." So his focus is on himself -- how he hates something she is doing. Instead, his focus should be on his wife -- how he needs to ease her distresses.

When he calls what she is doing as "nagging," the husband is attacking the core being of his wife's femininity.

In addition, he is missing the boat of intimacy in marriage. He is putting distance between himself and his wife when he falls into the pit of name calling, using derogatory terms to refer to the woman he says he loves. A few hours later, that same man will approach his wife in bed and want her to give him sex. She remembers that he called her by a derogatory feminine insult. She feels hurt and separated from him. What is she supposed to do now? Allow herself to be physically intimate with him across the mental gulf of separation? Whenever she gives in to his exploitative sexual demands or expectations, she feels like a prostitute or sexual slave. So she says she is tired, has a headache, and turns away, hoping to find some solace and sanity in her corner of the bed.

The man who calls his wife's behavior as "nagging" has an internal mental framework of women that is disrespectful and unjust. It is part of the attitudes we inherit in our socialization. Men are raised to disrespect the human rights of women. They are taught that it's all right to try to enslave women. I saw a disturbing TV documentary the other day that showed conversations between girls in third grade, or around the age of nine, thus pre-puberty. They were talking about boys and sharing notes. They talked about being pressured by the boys whom they were "dating" to give them orgasmic gratification. They used graphic and explicit language about how to do it efficiently. They said that the boys insist on it and if the girls don't service them, they refuse to have anything to do with them, make fun of them, gossip about them, and harass them in various denigrating ways. These young boys and girls are in training, practicing the male dominance model with each other. The women learn the notion that society expects them to service men sexually. When they become a little order, this includes sexual intercourse on dates and in marriage, whenever the man says he wants it or needs it.

The great irony of this tradition-grounded sexual abuse of women by men is that men get the false and pernicious belief that women don't like sex as much as men. In fact, the opposite is the case, as every woman knows, and as every man knows who likes women for their femininity.

The male dominance model creates a mental separation between men and women. The result is that women have no other recourse but to refuse having sex with their husbands, whenever they feel they can get away with it without heavy retaliation. This refusal to have sex does not mean that the women want sex less than the men. The women need and want sex because this gives them the intimacy in the relationship that relieves and takes away their stress of life. It's only when the men drive them to desperation that women are willing to give up the sexual intimacy they need and crave for. The husband can improve his act by showing that he cares about relieving her stress and distress. If he agrees to put out the garbage, he stays focused on it so that he does it when he knows she expects him to do it. He does not postpone it because he is motivated by the right thing -- his wife's distress. If he forgets, and she has to remind him, he never thinks of her as nagging. He thinks of her as helpful. He thanks her. He does it immediately. He apologizes for the fact she had to remind him and therefore experience stress as a result of his not having done it. This is mental intimacy. When the husband does that to his wife, she will be propelled by her own emotions to look for sexual intimacy with him at the first opportunity.

The husband has to maintain this focus on the wife's emotional needs for mental intimacy. He will see his domestic tasks not as "helping" her, but as easing her mind and sharing the focus and involvement. This is what she needs and craves for, and this is what he should compel himself to give her.

11.3.5.2.2  "Give him sex"

As pointed out in the previous section, the hostile political semantics of "nagging" creates a mental distance between the man who uses that word and idea, and the woman who knows that the man thinks of her in derogatory terms that demean her femininity. There are multiple anti-feminine words and ideas that husbands bring into the marriage and contribute to the mental distance with their wives. This mental distance inhibits and suppresses mental intimacy, upon which is based a woman's feeling of wanting to be sexually intimate with that man. Women are biologically and spiritually "wired in" for conjugial love or the celestial marriage. Women crave deeply for the soul-mate to come along and save her from her loneliness. A woman feels loneliness within her being, and she craves deeply and intensely to fulfill herself in a complete and total union with a man. It is in this complete and total union with a husband that a woman's immortality lies. Swedenborg discussed this point with women who had been married to a man for thousands of years in their heavens. These women looked in the "prime of their beauty," forever youthful, happy, fulfilled more and more each day to eternity. This is the mental state for which God created woman, for which she craves constantly without letup, and in which she finds herself completed at last as true and genuine woman.

This is the mental intimacy a wife craves for, and this is the very thing that a man naturally hates and avoids.

At first.

This is how men enter into relationships with women prior to marriage, and bring this outlook with them in marriage. You can see why so many women feel desperate after waiting for a few years within the marriage, waiting for the man she is with to be willing to conjoin himself with her mentally, not just sexually in accordance with his corporeal desires and physical and physiological makeup. The wife longs for the day when her husband will have sex with her after he fulfilled her need to be mentally intimate with him. She needs to see how he humbles himself as a biological man and uses his higher mental powers to compel himself to become mentally intimate with her. She has watched him for years turn away in disgust from her femininity. Whenever she reveals some of her femininity to him, he tries to squash it, turn it around, deflect it, argue with it, insult it. This is how she sees his idea of her "nagging" him to put out the garbage. What does he do when she reveals to him that she needs for him to involve himself with her feelings and emotions of distress every day? He deflects the idea into a concession or promise to "help" her more. Marriage counselors in the male dominance mode are fully satisfied with the husband when he does this.

But the wife is desperate. She begins to doubt herself in the face of such authority of society. Maybe there is something wrong with her individually, she wonders with deep distress and alarm. She is confused by all this political activity within her relationship. She knows clearly and definitively from within what it is she wants. She wants and needs mental intimacy, mental conjunction, mental unition, mental unity, oneness. She can hardly say these words or think these thoughts. They are words and thoughts from the angel wives in their immortal happiness as conjugial wives united to a conjugial husband. Their thoughts echo as vague feelings and longings inside the heart and will of every woman.

The politics of sexual blackmail for the benefit of male dominance prevents a husband and wife from entering into a deeper spiritual union that involves them in mutual and reciprocal mental intimacy. The masculinity of the man now has to come face to face with the femininity of the woman. From the perspective of a man I can report that this is an awesome and terrifying encounter. Men can know their wives for 20 years and never come face to face with their femininity. Men are not aware of this, and may want to deny this, upon reading it. But every man can examine the objective evidence by observing himself. This self-witnessing effort must be constant all day long for many months and years (see Section xx). But even at the beginning you can already observe how you turn away from your wife when she wants to be mentally intimate with you.

For example, at as shopping outing together, she somehow got it wrong, and didn't show up at the place you were to meet her. After much annoyance and stress, you find her. You show your annoyance, sometimes aggressively, embarrassing her, or sarcastically, calling her names or implying something unflattering. You now expect her to pacify you, to act like she is sorry, to eat humble pie so as to soothe your disturbed emotional state. Instead, she argues with you about who got it wrong in the first place. You argue back. You both get to the car and start the ride home. You stay silent as a protest against her behavior.

In this episode, so common among couples, the husband is continuously and repeatedly turning away from his wife's femininity. He hates that femininity. He hates what that femininity thinks and does. "Why doesn't she admit that she is the one who got it wrong and as a result, I had to wait and wait for her." The husband is performing avoidance of femininity. He is turning her down for mental intimacy. Instead, he wants to maintain his masculine idea of what happened. Later, some of us learn that we can abandon the masculine perspective on many of our interactions with the wife. This doesn't mean that we are becoming less manly. And later we discover that facing the femininity in our wife enhances our manliness or manhood. This is the process of becoming mentally intimate with one's wife. The more we as husbands, involve ourselves in the femininity of our wife, the more we feel our manhood. This is because the anatomy and physiology of our mental organs have been created by God with reciprocal functions that are totally masculine or totally feminine. Note one thing in a man's mind can be like any thing in a woman's mind, and vice versa. This total and absolute differentiation at all levels of being, between a man and a woman, makes it functionally possible for the man and the woman to be united into a perfect conjugial union that lasts to eternity and enhances the feelings of each partner, magnifying it into joy, bliss, and happiness.

What's more, the mental intimacy that allows this conjugial unity, is built into the woman's framework by birth, but is absent at birth from the man's framework. The man has the capacity to change his inherited traits regarding male dominance. This change is to be voluntary, acquired through the man's own self-compulsion. No one, the wife the least, can compel the man to love and honor her femininity by suppressing and abandoning his male dominance model which holds women in inferior position to themselves in many areas in life. The wife has no power to compel the man to be mentally intimate with her. He has the power. A man wants to do everything from his own voluntary motivation and understanding.  Otherwise he feels coerced, like a slave, and he rebels in fury and turns away. But man in this brutish state is not happy, despite his macho bravado exterior. He doesn't know what's wrong. The wife knows, but he does not yet listen to her insights about him. Eventually, through the wife's cumulative love and sweet caring efforts, the husband begins to discover that he loves her femininity. It's not scary at all, not ugly, not naggy and spiteful and confused and unpredictable. Femininity is beautiful, and interesting, and wise, and fun, and sexy.

This is what the enlightened husbands get to find out -- that femininity is sexy. Wives who have attained mental intimacy with their husbands have never been accused of not giving them enough sex. To instruct a woman to "give him more sex," as is done by many male dominance marriage counselors,  is not only to hurt the wife's femininity, but also to make it more difficult for the couple to become mentally intimate. It's mental intimacy that the therapists and counselors should be focusing on, in my view. Once that is resolved, the sexual intimacy is resolved. A man loses his manly integrity and beauty when he complains about his wife that she is not giving him enough sex. Instead of addressing the sexual frequency issue directly, and unfairly confronting the wife about it, marriage counselors should, in my view, address the mental intimacy problem. And this problem should be addressed to the husband, not the wife, since it is the man who turns away from it while the woman desires it.

11.3.5.2.3   "Don't try to change him"

What is mental intimacy? Few men consider this topic of sufficient interest to have formulated an adequate idea of what mental intimacy is. Women on the other hand think of nothing more than mental intimacy. It is the biological and spiritual urge in them to always to seek mental intimacy with the man they love.  Women know that mental intimacy with a man is allowing yourself to be changed by the partner so you fit better together. When a woman loves a man she strives hard to please him, which means to get to know his thoughts and his sense of humor, his likes and dislikes, his passions. When a wife in love tries to be mentally be intimate with her husband, she fidgets with his hair, straightens his collar, washes his clothes, shops for his underwear, reads his letters, rearranges his room, gives him instructions, tells him what to do, what not to wear, whom to avoid, etc. etc. In other words, the loving and intimate wife wants to be all over her husband all the time.

But beyond such sensorimotor intimacy, which she experiences as being in his life physically, she also wants to be in his life mentally. This means being able to roam around her husband's thoughts and feelings. This is the essence of mental intimacy as experienced by femininity. A wife will ask questions upon questions in pursuit of his revelations and confessions. She doesn't want any secrets or covered closets between them. When I was still getting my act together as a conjugial husband, I disliked such close attention to the details of something I did or thought. I felt that she should accept the amount of detail I gave, which was considerable, and not probe beyond that. I didn't like it. It felt like over-control to all the control I already agreed to let her have. It's only much later that I was able to experience her involvement in micro-details as her femininity in operation. She was in her very life when she was involved with the micro-details of my life, thoughts, and doings. For me to experience this as anything but feminine love, sweet and inquisitive, would be to betray her to the core of our relationship.

I have learned from my discussion with students that it's common for men to think that their girlfriend or wife should not try to change them. So strong is this male dominant tradition that many of the women students also think this. The women have internalized the arguments of the men and now they act like they too believe it. Deep down they do not accept the argument because they can perceive within themselves that their man should listen to her perceptions and insights about him. The women can perceive the man's habits that are detrimental to his happiness and effectiveness as a man, as well as detrimental to their relationship. But she may also realize that the man is going to refuse taking in her influence on his habits. She also sees that if she insists on discussing the issue, the man turns cold towards her and this hurts her deeply. So she tries to avoid making him cold by being too intimate with him. She keeps her distance, and this makes her interiorly sad and lonely, but forever hopeful in case he might change his mind and his attitudes and allow her to roam around in his mind.

Cognitive intimacy between husband and wife is not merely sharing of ideas and telling each other secrets. It is also gaining the right to roam around in each other's mind.

What happens when a man tells his wife or girlfriend that she should not try to change him and that she should accept him as a human being for what he uniquely is. Or else, the man may say that certain of his "family" traits are innate and cannot be changed. Or else the man might accuse the woman of not liking him for who he is, of not accepting him as a person. When a man takes this position, the woman experiences him as cold. This is an important concept to women, yet men are mostly unaware of it. When a man wants to stop his wife from roaming around his mind, she experiences him as turning cold. Mental cold is the opposite of mental intimacy. A woman experiences mental intimacy as hot and free. So does a man -- but only after he has entered a new enlightened phase of life and marriage.

A conjugial husband who has learned to love the femininity of his wife feels warm and expansive when his wife roams around his mind. He thoroughly enjoys mental intimacy with her and experiences it as romantic love.

He feels her poking around his memory. He is intrigued by what in him interests her. When she sees something she wants to fix, change, or rearrange in his mind, he is delighted by the attention. Pretty soon he is turned on by her interest and he gets animated and enthusiastic. He has a good time as she tells him to stop thinking a certain way about something. He is very agreeable about it. He is delighted by being able to please her in that way. 

In my years of preparation and development as a conjugial husband I would feel this type of mental roaming around as an invasion of privacy or selfhood. Sometimes even as betrayal. For example, I would tell her about something that I said to someone. My wife would then comment that what I said was not a good thing to do. I would then give her further details and she would use these details against me, I thought, to prove that I was wrong. I hated that. I thought she was trespassing upon my territory. I thought that she had no business doing that since she knew little about the totality of the situation. I felt like she was betraying me after I told her these details. This was my conjugial cold as a husband. But in later years I realized that it was all wrong and delusional for me to go off on that angle. This is not what she was doing. She was being her femininity. She was caring and loving and honest and sweet. She takes it upon herself to fix my mind so that it be healed from all the male dominance craziness I inherited from culture and practiced for many years. She was giving me a new chance to be free as a real man.

And now I feel it is normal and good for my wife to act on my physical and mental territory as if it was her own. The thought of "don't try to change me" is far from me. Instead I want her to change me because I feel it as her love and sweetness in me.

11.3.5.2.4   "Keep yourself attractive for him"

When men apply this idea to married women they mean "sexually" attractive. One of the common ways husbands bad mouth their wives is to say that they "have let themselves go," by which they mean that their wives are not acting sexually seductive, when they used to while the two of them were dating. 

The idea of a woman acting seductively to a man is a man's way of thinking. When they get married, men seldom give up their sexual interests in other women. They may boast that they have been faithful to their partner for many years, yet at the same time they hide their unfaithful thoughts and fantasies. Men believe that if they are unfaithful in thought and fantasy, they are still to be considered faithful as long as they don't act out their sexuality physically with another woman. Some men even insist that they can carry out an intimate email exchange with another woman and still feel that he deserves to be called faithful to his wife, as long as he doesn't make an attempt to phone the woman or to see her. Many husbands think it's all right for them to enjoy pornography as long as it doesn't lead to actually seeing another woman. It's not uncommon for husbands away from home at a conference to visit a strip bar and to spend money on the "working girls" there  who pleasure the men in various ways. 

Men have invented a form of male dominance sexuality in which the woman is expected to please the man by acting seductively. During the dating phase of intimacy, women go along with such macho expectations and try to act seductively. Without this, they know that  the man would not commit to a long term relationship. The women feel that they have no choice. In addition, the women may be confused from all the male propaganda in our society that elevates female seductive behavior to a high degree of desirability and reward. Some women even fall into the notion that seductiveness is femininity. But it is not. To a woman sex is something that follows and flows from mental intimacy. Seductive behavior puts the cart before horse. When a man wants a woman to act seductively, he is giving up his true role as a man. Many men are so addicted to seductive sexuality that they become impotent with their wives and lose all interest in having sex with them. Marriage counselors and the media encourage seductive behavior on the part of women. This is a male perspective -- "Promise me sexual favors in advance so that I may be sure that you're going to give out. I don't have to do anything. You have to be my sexual slave." This constitutes a sexual turn on for men who have not learned to be mentally intimate with a woman.

The idea that a wife should "keep herself attractive" for her husband is chauvinistic because it does not apply to the husband at the same time. It would be all right if you said that married partners should keep themselves looking attractive to each other. This means him and her. He should not walk around the house in his dirty shorts, unshaven for the whole weekend, smelling of beer and beans. He should not put on weight and he should maintain his physical conditioning so that he may do things around her with strength and grace. Similarly, she should be clean, avoid being overweight, and wear clothes that fit and are decorative and feminine. These rules are good rules of living for both. They are completely different from the unjust and denigrating rule of the wife having to look "sexy" when the man comes home from work.

When a husband says to the wife, "Be more sexy for me," he is breaking intimacy with her. A wife likes the idea of her husband wanting to have sex with her. She is is always very willing. All he has to do is to put her in the mood so she can be genuinely sexy instead of seductively or artificially faking it. He can succeed with her sexually by being mentally intimate first. I have had to learn over the years that mental intimacy is not something I can turn on and off. For instance, if I speak to my wife sharply or impatiently in the morning, forget to do a couple of things she expected me to do in the afternoon, and come home in a bad mood, then I cannot expect to reverse everything a few minutes before bedtime, act nice and interested in her for awhile, and then expect her to fall in bed and have sex. Mental intimacy cannot be turned on and off. It has to be maintained in order to give the woman the preparedness she needs for giving herself sexually to her man.

11.3.5.2.5   "That's how men are"

The gender politics of the male dominance model strives to maintain a double standard that is strict and harsh on women but easy going on men. Women are expected to adapt themselves to their husbands while men are, well, the way they are. You cannot change men, according to this false ideology. Before men become husbands, they are are trained in the philosophy known as "boys will be boys." That women are discouraged from pre-marital promiscuity is a given, even is men are allowed to "sow their wild oats" before getting married and "settling down." Marriages have been weakened in the sense that men and women are less capable of benefiting and fulfilling each other, many of them ending in divorce. Marriages can be restored to their created greatness by restoring a philosophy of chastity for both men and women. Swedenborg talked to couples in their immortal heaven who had lived on earth thousands of generations ago. They belonged to the early generations of the human race on earth called the celestial civilization (see Section xx). Both men and women had a premarital life of chastity. Adultery did not exist. They had celestial marriages on earth with the husband and wife fully conjoined in mental intimacy through living the unity model.

It has often been said that men are by nature promiscuous while women are monogamous. This is true of the unenlightened natural man, before he is willing to undergo character reformation and become a spiritual man (see Section xx). After he becomes spiritual, a man also becomes monogamous, not just by self-compulsion, but my mental disposition as well. A spiritually enlightened husband understands that marriage is a creation by God, and thus most holy. He knows from revelation that marriage is forever. When he is enlightened, a man thinks back on his marriage vows "till death do us part" and wants to amend it "till death do us part in this world and then to eternity in the afterlife." This is the conjugial commitment -- "I will be for you everything I can be to make you happy. This means changing myself so that I have what it takes to make you happy from myself. This is my love for you so that I can be yours more and more, and you can be mine more and more, to the eternal future."

11.3.5.2.6   "Show that you appreciate him"

I typed the phrase "Show that you appreciate him" into the google.com Web search engine and it listed 57 sites that use this phrase. Several that I looked at had to do with giving advice to women on how to convince their man that they love him and appreciate him. Here are two samples. The first is about interactions generally, while the second is specifically sexual. Both samples are written from the male dominance perspective, and they may have been written by women or men.

65 WAYS TO SAY YOU LOVE HIM
            c. Show That You Appreciate Him
21. Do your best to stay up and greet him with a hug if he's stuck working super-late.
22. Write him thank-you notes whenever he gets you treats or does huge favors.
23. Take him out for ice cream after he's quit a job he hates, nervous, scored a new one,
        been promoted, or earned a raise.
24. If you can Keep track of his big business meetings so you remember to ask him how they went.
26. Show up at his softball, hoops, hockey games or the games he likes the most and cheer the loudest.
27. Read his magazines and discuss some of the articles with him.
28. Master the fundamentals of his favorite sport to watch or play.
30. If you are working then try to arrive first, so you can greet him with a huge hug and smile.
            (Seen on the Web in December 2004 at 
                www.suratcityonline.com/women/relationship/65ways2.asp )

====================

            Get Physical (and More)
14. Get a bikini wax in the middle of winter.
16. Wear your sexiest shoes -- and nothing else -- to bed.
18. Invite him to join you in the bathtub during what's supposed to be your precious alone time.
19. Let him change your mind when you don't think you're in the mood.
20. Get some lingerie in his favorite color.
21. Pat him on the butt in front of his buddies.
22. Get a temporary tattoo and have him strip-search you to find it.
24. Draw the curtains and declare it a naked day.
25. Grab his crotch when you're on a crowded dance floor or watching a movie in a theater.
26. Wipe your lipstick off your mouth before you attack him with a surprise make-out session.
27. Trace "I love you" on his back and have him guess what you're writing.
28. Call him right before he leaves the office and tell him you have a sexy surprise for him when he gets home -- then follow up.
31. Tell him you're not wearing underwear the next time you're at a family event.
        (On the Web December 2004 Redbook Magazine Sex & Marriage  http://magazines.ivillage.com/redbook/sex/closer/articles/0,,284441_289189-2,00.html?arrivalSA=1&cobrandRef=0&arrival_freqCap=2

The first sample is from the male dominance perspective because it advises the woman to adopt the interaction manners of a man. The items listed are masculine behaviors, thought up in the male imagination of a man, and taught to other men and women so that it has become part of the political semantics of male dominance in society. For instance, a woman should "Master the fundamentals of his favorite sport, " "Read his magazines," and "Show up at his softball games and cheer the loudest." This is what a man would think when asked how a woman can show that she appreciates him. Should a woman therefore act this way? Or, should a man learn more feminine ways of receiving the message that she appreciates him?

The feminine way would be to express her fondness of him by telling him that she is fond of him and what she likes about him. She would also express sensorimotor intimacy on a continuum that the man should keep track of. She might touch his arm and lean on it while crossing the street. She would smile at him often and look into his eyes. She could kiss him on the lips. She might write him a note or give him a modest gift. The behavioral items listed in the first sample are indeed practiced by many women, but it is not because of their femininity thinking of acting that way. Their motivation to act this way is from their femininity, namely, how can she gain the man's attention and loyalty. This is an exquisite feminine involvement and activity. But the manner of acting as portrayed in the items is not the style of behavior she would choose. She does it anyway, though she feels this is not how she would like to express herself. In her feminine thinking she would rather that he change his involvement, paying more attention to her in particular, than these political and official "moves" in the relationship game, as seen by men.

The second sample advises wives to act seductively towards their husband as a way of showing him that she loves him. It tells the woman to do things she would not do, like "Getting a bikini wax in the winter," or "Grabbing his crotch on a dance floor or a movie theater." These are items fabricated by the male dominance way of thinking about women sexually as playmates for men. In other words, a husband fantasizes that a wife should act this way, and if she did, he would be more sexually interested in her. Instead, he could become involved in her femininity, and how a woman naturally feels like expressing her sexual love to her husband. She would not "wear her shoes to bed -- and nothing else." She would not naturally want to "Pat him on the butt in front of his buddies" or "not wearing underwear at a family event."

A man's imagination thinks of such things because he is in the socialized habit of sexualizing women's body parts. He thinks of her "not wearing panties at a family gathering" as a provocative expression of her sexuality. On the other hand, she thinks of it as mixing things in a disturbing and uncomfortable way. She considers not wearing parties as something inconvenient and awkward. He wants her to ignore her feelings of inconvenience and strangeness and get involved with his sexualizing image of her not wearing panties.  The male dominance perspective wants woman to act in accordance with what a man fantasizes as sexy. The unity model perspective wants a man to act in accordance with what makes a woman feel sexy.

The advice "Let him change your mind when you don't think you're in the mood" is part of the sexual blackmail discussed above. The male dominance view wants the wife to ignore her feelings of not wanting to have sex when her husband acts like he wants to. The advice is to go ahead anyway -- if you want to show him that yu love him. This is a male dominance perspective. It urges the woman to go against her feelings at the moment. Remember that those feelings of distance she feels have been there for hours and days, or longer. He has not been willing to become mentally intimate with her during those hours, days, or weeks. And even now, as he is feeling the urge of physical sex, he wants her to act like man, to ignore the mental intimacy issues that separate them, and to get involved in the physical sex of the moment. It doesn't bother the male dominance point of view to notice that she is not sexually aroused, prepared, and in the mood. The husband wants to have sex with her anyway, even if she is not prepared for it because he did not do his share.

The advice is therefore a form of sexual blackmail or slavery. According to this male view, a husband has a constitutional right to have sexual access to the wife. In other words, she doesn't have the right to refuse sexual activity even though he has not prepared her for it by being mentally intimate with her first. The advice women commonly receive from experts consists of a set of behaviors she must perform for him if he is to believe her that she loves him. She must "Get some lingerie in his favorite color," "Get a temporary tattoo and have him strip-search her to find it," or "Draw the curtains and declare it a naked day." Women are pressured into acting according to the imagination of a man who hates femininity.

This assertion is difficult for men to accept prior to their enlightenment. According to their view, they love femininity since their fantasies are about women and their bodies. But this is incorrect. All men are born with a natural enjoyment of having sex with many women. This motivation and involvement with having sex is not an indication that they love femininity, The opposite is the case. When men begin to love femininity, they realize that all along they had but a male picture of having sex with a woman. And this male picture involves the dominance and abuse of femininity. You know this when you consider that almost every nation on this planet sanctions abusive and shocking practices against young girls and women, married or not. You can see it on TV where abuse of women by men is a common portrayal. The sexual abuse and exploitation of women is nothing else than hatred of femininity. The sex industry -prostitution, pornography, and bar girls -- involves the majority of men at some point in their life. Why do they love it? Not because they love femininity, but because they despise women, wanting to squash their human rights, wanting to enslave them as objects that serve their satisfaction. Men who seduce women hate their femininity and love to hurt them deeply by destroying their innocence. Men who love their wives but hate their femininity are impotent with them without drugs or pornography. 

Men who do not care for the woman's feminine sexuality demand that she "attack him with a surprise make-out session" or "Call him right before he leaves the office to tell him you have a sexy surprise for him when he gets home -- then follow up." This is something many women would do and do, no doubt, but only as a duty, not as a free choice or love. A wife is normally working hard in the relationship so that the husband would be pleased with her and thus become more attached to her. This is her goal and constant striving in the relationship. So girls and women learn to enact what the men want them to be like if they're going to be able to perform sexually with them, and thus hopefully, to become attached to them. Women have been willing to give up their own sexuality which belongs to their femininity. Deep down women may perceive that they are not living the fulfilling life. Some women may seek this fulfillment in all sorts of wrong ways. Wrong for them because they do not attain fulfillment through these patterns of behaviors with men.

Eventually a woman's biology, psychology, and spirituality require the unity model relationship in order to be fulfilled as a woman. Swedenborg witnessed this feminine fulfillment in the heavens where live the conjugial couples in their eternity. He describes what the wives look like on the exterior -- youthful, beautiful, wise, and dynamic, and what they are in their interior, according to what the women revealed to Swedenborg -- their total unity with their husband, their reciprocal interdependence, their constant co-presence to each other, how the women know what the men are thinking and feeling, how they experience sexuality, etc.

---

From the perspective of the unity model, let me propose the following list of effective behaviors for husbands who desire sexual intimacy with their wife. These behaviors are mechanisms by which the husband is able to achieve mental intimacy with his wife.

1. laugh at her humor

2. make her laugh by knowing her humor

3. hang around with her while she is doing things, keeping her company and showing interest in the details of her actions and focus of attention

4. take what she says with respect without doubting it or minimizing it in any way

5. never take sides against her in relation to children, parents, friends, or strangers

6. become familiar with her involvement in clothes and make up, acquiring her perspective and taste

7. show that you prefer to give up time from your hobby or friends and to spend it with her instead

8.  when she gets mad at you and talks to you like she is mad, always be receptive and gentle, willing to take it on the chin like a real man, never reacting in anger or retaliation or resentment

9. when it looks like she is criticizing your actions or complaining about you, always take it with honor, being willing to receive her criticisms as nothing but passionate appeals to you to change your behavior or way of thinking from bad to good

10. when you hurt her feelings by what you say or do, always work hard to undo the hurt by explaining to her on different occasions what it is you did and what was wrong with it

11. when you initiate sexual intimacy, always give her a series of thresholds at which she can indicate hesitation or discomfort in going further, then respect that line without talking about it or making her justify it

12. learn her normal sexual response pattern by observing what her preferences are, keeping track of them over time, and staying within the limits of those patterns, thus giving her satisfaction and fulfillment without accompanying mixed feelings like stress, anxiety, or discomfort

13. keep track of her body needs and procedures, showing involvement with them by being able to discuss them with her -- weight, energy, hormones, drugs, vitamins, ob-gyn, regularity, symptoms, check ups

14. give her something pleasant to eat, taste, or smell as often as you can in the course of the day

15. learn various massage techniques -- head, shoulder, neck, feet, hands, face -- and do at least one of them on her every day, being careful not to sexualize it by treating it as foreplay

16. keep yourself clean and healthy and in good physical condition

17. never keep secrets from her, and when she doesn't know of something or doesn't ask, let her know of it

18. no matter what, always censor yourself, never voicing it out loud, when you think something bad about her -- unflattering, derogatory, sarcastic, cynical, upsetting, disagreeable, harsh, gross

19. if she is the cook in the family, hang around with her in the kitchen and act like a chef's assistant, but if you are the cook, never treat her like a chef's assistant, and convince her that you want her to feel liberated from traditionally expected kitchen involvements

20. never invoke or practice the equity principle or fifty-fifty rule in any interaction with her, and instead, let her off the hook at all times for all things, so that she can always choose in freedom what she should be doing at any one time without the political obligations imposed by the equity rule

    ---

11.3.5.2.7   "Wives, submit to your husbands"

This idea is examined in the next section.

 

11.3.5.3  Does the Male Dominance Model Have a Biblical Grounding?

Driving on my way back from campus today I was listening to the Word of Life radio broadcast in which pastors answer questions from callers regarding what the Bible says about this or that issue. It so happens that a woman called in asking about "Pastor Chuck's" view on Dr. Laura Schlessinger's book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. I immediately turned the volume up. I wanted to hear his answer. He said he didn't know of this specific book but that he has heard her give advice on her broadcasts and he has read articles about her. He said that he thought her advice was Biblical, and even though she is Jewish, not Christian, he thought that her practical answers to people's everyday dilemmas were in agreement with Christian beliefs as well. He asked the caller what specifically she was wondering about, and she said that the advice Dr. Laura gives  seems to say to wives should please their husbands and that they should learn to be happy by listening to them. Pastor Chuck chuckled a little and said that this indeed was the teaching of the Bible. And he quoted from Paul in the New Testament where it instructs husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church, and instructs wives to be obedient to their husbands. The caller thanked him and hung up.

This position has been claimed to have a Biblical grounding. It can be said that theistic psychology also has Biblical grounding because it is based on knowledge extracted from Sacred Scripture, by which is meant the threefold collection known as  the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings of Swedenborg. The view that husbands ought to love their wives as Christ loves the Church implies that the husband represents the Lord and the wife represents the Church. Although some verses of Paul's Epistles can be interpreted that way, other interpretations can be made that are more rational and more in keeping with the spirit of the New Testament. Seventeen centuries after the Incarnation Event (see Section xx), the Divine Human has made the long promised Second Coming in the mental world of truth. This Divine Truth of the Divine Human could not be revealed to the followers of historical Jesus of Nazareth who often warned them that they are not yet able to receive this truth.

By this He meant that they are not able to accept it, and if they are not able to accept it, they would reject it. If they reject the Divine Truth that they are given by their Lord, they profane it. Profaning the Divine Truth causes one's spiritual-rational mind to be turned off permanently because the profanation is now present in the lower mind. It can never be dislodged from there, which is why the Jesus warned them that the "sin against the Holy Spirit" cannot be forgiven. If Jesus had told His disciples what the Writings of Swedenborg have now revealed about Him, they would have rejected these things. The disciples, even the angels of heaven, were tempted to disagree with their Lord, when it was told them that He must be crucified. They wanted Him to use His Divine power to prevent the act from being carried out.

The disciples could not accept the rational things about the Divine Human that are revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg. These revelations are called "the Second Coming of Christ" when considered in their literal meaning, but "theistic psychology" when considered in their underlying scientific meaning (see Section xx). As is historically the case, the Writings Sacred Scripture were rejected by the primates of the Catholic and Protestant Churches when Swedenborg sent them a free un-requested copy. Some of these Church prelates passed into the afterlife world while Swedenborg was still busy writing several of the books of the Writings Sacred Scripture. Some of these newly arrived prelates who had seen the principal portion of the Writings Sacred Scripture called Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets), were informing their colleagues about it in the spiritual world of the afterlife. Swedenborg, being conscious in his spiritual mind, was given to be present during their debate and wrote down their principal arguments (see Section xx). In short, they rejected the new revelations of the Writings Sacred Scripture, and thereby were unable to receive these new truths of the Divine Human, the Spiritual Sun, and the method regeneration by temptations (see Section xx). Without these new truths, they were unable to rise to the heavens of their eternity, which is a rational heaven. (see Section xx).

The disciples and followers of Jesus were even less able to receive the rational truths given later in the Writings Sacred Scripture. They were told that they must give up their sensuous consciousness of Him -- seeing and touching Him in His Physical Presence and Body -- and must learn instead to acquire a rational consciousness of Him -- seeing Him with their inner eye, which is the rational understanding of truth from the spiritual sense of Sacred Scripture (see Section xx). This rational consciousness of Him was to be called "the Holy spirit" and in theistic psychology, the "Divine Psychologist" (see Section xx)  Henceforth the human race would have a new mental pathway towards immortality in heaven. The old mental pathways have been rendered nonfunctional. There was no longer a mechanism for transforming people from evil loves to good loves merely by their acknowledging the physical power of God. This sensuous idea of God worked for the earlier celestial race on this earth called the Most Ancient Church (see Section xx).

But with the "Fall" of the race, direct sensuous communication with the spiritual world ceased as the new generations lost the ability. Their mental organs no longer supported that function. Later generations called the "spiritual race," had a split-brain which reflects the fact that the mental organs of the will and understanding were separated. IN the celestial race these two organs always worked together. They were locked into each other like the heart and the lungs are interdependent for operation. But in the new split-brain race, the affective organ of the will and the cognitive organ of the understanding evolved a new way of functioning -- separated at birth, locked together later by voluntary control. This is the essence of rational consciousness, out of which the new human heavens were created through the completion of the Writings in 1771. And that point a new and final glorious chapter in the history of humanity was ushered in. Henceforth every individual, regardless of religion or intelligence or personality, would be able to follow the mental path of theistic psychology that leads to the new rational heavens present in the mind of every human being.

You can see your new rational heaven when you elevate your consciousness to the spiritual-natural level (see Section xx). You accomplish this by taking studying the concepts of theistic psychology and understanding them rationally. Your rational understanding is elevated when you begin to think and reason every day by means of these concepts. The modern mind is shaped by science and rational revelations. The scientific revelations of the Writings could not be understood prior to our modern civilization. But now they can, as long as one is willing to adopt the positive bias (see Section xx).

From all this you can now see that we need to extract the scientific truths from the literal statements in the New Testament that address the mutual roles of husband and wife before we can actually know what the Divine Human is teaching us regarding this relationship and how a husband is to love his wife, and vice versa. Here is an often cited passage from Paul's Letter to Ephesians found in the New Testament Bible:

22  Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26  to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27  and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28  In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29  After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- 30  for we are members of his body. 31  "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32  This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33  However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-33).

"Submit" is an exhortation that wives should relate to their husband through the husband's intellectual understanding. This is how we submit to the Divine Psychologist in our mind, through an intellectual understanding of His Divine Truth which is revealed in the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture. In this sense, when the wife acquires for herself the husband's knowledge and reasoning style, she is "submitting" to him "as to the Lord." The husband being "the head of the wife" means that he must honor and love the wife like "Christ honors and loves the church," that is, God loves and assists husbands and wives who acknowledge God. The Divine Human loves husbands and wives (who both make up "the church"), and this love is based on good and truth, substances flowing into the mind from the Spiritual Sun (see Section xx). That's how the husband must love the wife if he is going to love her "like Christ loves the church." That "the church submits to Christ" means that the men and women who lead their lives based on the truths of Sacred Scripture, remain true to the truths that the Incarnate Divine Human has revealed about Himself (see Section xx). In this same way "wives should submit to their husbands" means that the wife should acquire and appropriate to herself the husband's knowledge and style of reasoning. This is something that wives love to do -- ask a few of them if you're not sure (see Section xx).

That "husbands should love their wives as Christ gave Himself up for her" means that a husband must sacrifice his own interest or male prerogatives, and place the wife's requests and expectations of him as primary, that is, ahead of his own. By loving their wives in this way, husbands place the wife's wishes and affections ahead of their own. Instead of insisting on some issue that it should be done his way, he now insists on doing it her way, whenever they see things differently. In other words, wives are told in Sacred Scripture to think like their husbands think, while husbands are told to act like their wife wants them to. This is the Doctrine of the Wife (see Section xx).

The love a husband ought to have for his wife is to make her appear in his eyes as "radiant, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." When the husband loves his wife with this image in his mind, he loves her "as Christ loves the Church" that is, the Divine Human loves the men and women who lead their marriage through the spiritual truths of Sacred Scripture. Ephesians says that "husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies" which means that the wife should be loved as much as the husband loves himself. The husband does not love his wife as much as himself when he disagrees with her, rejects her perceptions of how he should behave, or what things should be done regarding any issue that concerns their relationship or marriage. This is also what the Doctrine of the Wife advocates (see Section xx). This is why it says that "he who loves his wife loves himself." This means that he loves her as much as himself. He does not attach greater weight to his judgment in comparison to hers.

Consider how the Writings Sacred Scripture analyze some of these statements in a passage from one of its Books titled Conjugial Love: .

CL 125. (vi) The husband does not represent the Lord and his wife the church, because they both together, husband and wife, make up the church.

It is generally said in the church that as the Lord is the head of the church, so the husband is the head of the wife.*[E.g. Ephesians 5:23].  From this it would follow that the husband would represent the Lord and the wife the church. But the Lord is the head of the church, and human beings, male and female, are the church; and even more so in the case of husband and wife. In this case the church is first planted in the man and by means of the man in the wife, because the man receives its truth in his intellect, and the wife receives it from the man. But if it happens the other way round, this is not in good order. However, this does sometimes happen, but only in the case of men who are no lovers of wisdom, and so not part of the church either, or who in servile fashion hang upon their wives' whims. On this subject generally see the remark in the Preliminaries (21).  (CL 125)

Note the obvious fact that "the church" is made up of both men and women, and so it is not rationally correct to say that the wife represents the church. Since the husband and the wife together represent the church, it is obviously not correct to say that the husband represents the Lord. This is an incorrect idea, namely, that the husband represents the Lord and therefore the wife must love and honor Him like the Lord, whom the husband represents. But this is not what is contained in Sacred Scripture in its correspondential sense. Instead, the husband is commanded to love his wife like he loves himself, which means he should not try to impose his will upon her when she disagrees with him on some issue relating to their relationship, but should honor what she requests, wants, or expects of him.

Here is an email contributed by Dawn Potts, based on a speech she gave to a gathering of New Church women, in which she gives a contemporary New Church perspective on the role of women in marriage viewed from the spiritual perspective, and based on the Writings of Swedenborg:

The Roots of False Attitudes

by Dawn Potts (2006)

Domination and Conjugilitous

I will begin this discussion by first paraphrasing from a paper I found called "The Effects of Christianity" which explains how in the centuries after the Lord's first advent women's roles disintegrated. 1 believe the role of women is reformed by the teachings of the New Church.

In this paper "The effects of Christianity" it is brought to our attention and described how the Lord in His actions and teachings rejected all the traditional ideas of status and the social customs of His time by repetitively including women. For example The Lord first declared His Divinity to a Samaritan woman, in a culture in which women were subordinate and Samaritans outcasts. He used women as well as men to illustrate the values of faith, humility, and charity. The poor widow's gift was worth more than that of the rich man... The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid... five wise maidens filled their lamps with oil. He saved the life of one of the most despised figures in Jewish society, the adulteress.

When Martha complained that Mary was not helping her serve the meal, The Lord replied that 'Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken from her." These are only a few of the innumerable examples of the Lord speaking directly to women without discrimination.

Now we know that by the time of the Council of Nicaea when the Divine was divided into three persons, the epistles of Paul had with authority, greatly influenced the attitude towards women. Remember, Paul was a Jew speaking from his Jewish heritage and also a Pharisee. By the third century menstruating women, could not approach the altar. By the seventh century all of the myths about the destructive power of women had been revised. Church Fathers then ranked the completely celibate life higher than even the chaste married life. Priests ritually purified a woman from the contamination of childbearing and the greater contamination of having birthed a daughter.

These are the demeaning views of women when the Christian Church began to formalize their organization and exclude women from any position of responsibility, leadership or respect that they had previously enjoyed. Societies in many areas of the earth used the same falsified biblical sources to justify the subordination of their wives.

Through the nineteenth century in European generations the wife was considered as a piece of property, and we know that this is still the case in the Middle East and other places.

Do you experience today anything which demonstrates these kinds of tendencies?

So in the seventeen hundreds Swedenborg's teachings on marriage were actually revolutionary teachings. Coming into the environment of that day many of the things said in Conjugial Love were not to be easily accepted.

How different and new in contrast to Paul's teaching, these ideas from Conjugial Love must have seemed. There can be no domination in a marriage; domination destroys Conjugial Love whether it is domination of a husband over a wife-- or domination of a wife over a husband.

In some areas in early New Church thinking these applications of the letter of the Writings produced attitudes, which continued to hold women in the previous sub-servant roles especially doctrinally, believing as did most cultures, that women were not smart enough to vote, to be on Boards or included in Church Councils and not rational and there fore should not to be included in the discussion of Doctrine.

This attitude continued to be confirmed, I believe by misapplying statements in the letter of the Writings which say, 'a man corresponds to the understanding and a women to the will and that a wife is dependent on her husband's wisdom to get anywhere in Regeneration'.

When the Writings are viewed as "Plain Teachings" and applied literally such teachings "that a wife is dependent on her husband for wisdom' some women have questioned in what way this is true, when this seems to say she is held again in bondage if her husband is not wise.

There seem to be more people who are now considering that the Writings in these numbers are giving a description in the letter, of what the male and female are in their inmost, and these statements defining the qualities of gender are not to be directly applied to those who are not in" inmost things" which is producing a more comfortable reaction.

In what ways do we hear these kinds of statements about husband and wife with a good feeling? Or with an uncomfortable one?

As the New Church developed different views of the teachings of Swedenborg developed. Some believed the Writings to be literally true but not the Word of God. Some viewed them as the Word of God and only literally true, while some believed them to be the Word of God with an external and an internal sense just as the Old and New Testament have, that a person comes into through regeneration.

And so different branches of the New Church evolved and here we are at Temonos having this New Church gathering to celebrate those different branches of the New Church and share the leaves of those different beliefs and acknowledge the Lord's Providence in the Church's growth. And with delight see the freedom of variety in understanding.

I would like to share the opinions of The Lord's New Church, which is Nova Hierosolyma on this subject. When the Writings are read believing them to be a Divine Revelation in every way, with an spiritual sense that a person comes into through regeneration. It is believed that they should be read as the Lord speaking directly to each person. This is what The Lord's New Church calls 'The One Man Principle', or 'One Person Principle".

I want to read some quotes which I have extracted randomly from the Writings, which point to a different level of meaning a person can come in to about what Conjugial Love is, and how it is understood differently and see how really it is speaking of the conjunction of good and truth in one self.

"That all those belonging to the Lord's Church... whether they are virgins, or young men, wives or husbands, youths or old men, maidens or old women, are understood by virgins where virgins are mentioned". A 'virgin' signifies the Church as a bride who is willing to be conjoined to the Lord and become a wife. By father, mother, brothers, children, and many names of relationship are goods and truths, also evils and falsities” (AC10490)

The affection of truth called forth from the natural man into the rational is as a married woman (AC3160)

The affection of good and the affection of truth in the natural man are situated as brother and sister, but the affection of truth called forth from the natural man into the rational is as a married woman (AC3160)

For the Word of the Lord is such that inmostly it focuses on the Lord Himself and His kingdom. This is the source of all the life of the Word. Here likewise it is the heavenly marriage that is focused inmostly... ..such is its nature that a proprium given life by the Lord is called the Lord's Bride and also Wife'.

One does not know what Conjugial Love is unless he be in good and truth from the Lord (AC10171)

By women is to be understood the Church". (AC252)

Every doctrinal of faith has in itself the heavenly marriage (AC2516)

So by women is signified the affection of truth.

The good of the rational is the brother, truth, the sister (AC 2508e)

In the Word marriage signifies the marriage of good and truth (HH 3132,4434,4835)

Where in the Word, marriages are treated of, the heavenly marriage, which is of good and truth, and in the supreme sense, the Divine marriage which is in the Lord is meant (AC3132)

When betrothal and marriage is spoken about in the Word, the initiation and conjunction of good and truth are treated of."

All these statements in the Writings point to a deeper meaning to every word of the Writings.

What thoughts do you have about these quotes?

In the twelve volumes of the Arcana Coelestia, which contains the instruction of how a person’s spiritual mind is opened; and how by living the truths that we know we can develop and be given a new will from the Lord, there never mentions any difference between a women's path and a man's path of regeneration.

Doesn't it just need to be emphasized how the perception of truth that a women has -----is equal to the understanding of truth that a man has?

The Writings teach that there are Cherubim put to guard that a person does not go into truths they cannot be kept in. There are Cherubim in the letter of the Old and New Testaments guarding the internal sense, things saying 'light being created before the sun', 'smashing babies', 'commandment to leave father and mother', etc. these things which give the Lord a way to keep a person from accepting the Word as truth. The same things are in the letter of the Writings, odd things, conflicting things, especially in the letter of Conjugial Love. Are these also Cherubim in the letter guarding the very precious internal things, especially truths said in the book of Conjugial Love which have meanings we will come to see as our spiritual sight increases?

I would like to quote here from an article, which expresses the direction of the thinking of "The Lord's New Church", "The Male and the Female", by Bishop Philip N. Odhner.

"The word male (Latin: masculus) is said to come from the Sanskrit "man", to think The word female (Latin: foemina) is from the foot fe, fev-, Greek "phuo", to produce; Sanskrit, 'bhuas', to become. The Latin 'flo' is from the same root, meaning to become.

The meanings of these roots, to think, and to produce or become, confirm the teachings of the Writings as to what the male and the female represent, and as to what they are.

....In many places the Word of the Writings appears to give the leading part to the male, and not to the female. This sometimes is very disturbing to women who read the Word or hear it because they suppose that this means that they are thus made entirely subservient to males, and have to look up to them for all things of spiritual life, and wait upon the males to do something before they can do anything.

The reason for this appearance in the Word (Writings) is that the Word (Writings) treat for the most part of the spiritual church and how the Lord raises it to become celestial, and in the spiritual Church the things of the true take the leading part.

In order that the leading part of the true may be signified, the sense of the letter must make the part of the male the leading part. Otherwise it would not be truly significant. And so in hundreds of places in the Word where male and female are mentioned, the male signifies the true and the female the good. But then, when the word treats of celestial things, the meaning is reversed. For example Abram and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob signify the Good, and their wives signify the affection of the true, and sometimes the true.

This turning about of the meaning of the male and female in relation to the spiritual and then relation to the celestial has to do with the fact that the internal of the spiritual is related to the external of the celestial.... We must recognize that this distinction does exist and is often spoken of in the Word.

A deeper understanding of all the Writings of Swedenborg, depends first on a deeper and substantial entering into the things taught in the Arcana Coelestia and especially of the things taught about the glorification of the Human of the Lord, and the regeneration of man as being the image of that glorification." (P.N. Odhner)

Hearing all these conflicting statements isn't it obvious that there has been and is good reason for misunderstanding the book Conjugial Love? And understanding what conjugial love is?

I would guess that whatever branch of the Church you are from, that when you got married; marriage was nothing like what you expected it to be. If you are not married I promise you it is still impossible to tell you what it is like to be in a marriage no matter how many books you read about it.

I also would say that I believe that conjugial Love is hardly what we all imagine now. Especially a young person’s romantic idea of that state of mind.

Don't we all start off with mostly an idealization of infatuation with many natural attractions apart from hardly any inward spiritual sight or development from the Lord?

Conjugialitious is the name I call this idealization or rather the false idealization of conjugial cove, which sends young girls out looking desperately - longingly for the ONE 'Conjugial Partner' yet with the fear "maybe I will marry the wrong person who isn't my conjugial partner"?

Conjugalitious is easy to catch and flourishes in our midst. It is passed down from generation to generation. It is a state of mind infatuated with romantic love as portrayed in the world, which in reality is being in love with our own personal gratification. Conjugialitous mistakenly identifies romantic feelings as conjugial love and does not see that it is an inmost state of mind, which is from the Lord and only gained through each partner's regeneration by which the Lord makes them ONE.

Is conjugalitious a bad thing or a necessary state that most youth passes through? Is it a worry? Would education cure it?

Because every thing in the whole of creation corresponds to the conjunction of Good and Truth, is Good and Truth in Substance and Form this beautiful sphere of Love fills the whole earth, it is present everywhere.

Don't most people get married believing that the wonderful feelings of happiness in a relationship are just free---believing that married life is all about these similitudes of likes and dislikes, and always wake up to find that each has a whole proprial self that must be reborn to create a marriage and a married partner. How can we teach this; that marriage is a Holy journey?

Conjugial love is found on the path of regeneration. When it says that conjugial love is one with the state of the Church with a person, that is something deeply real.

I fully believe that the teachings of the New Church about marriage can bring to the world enlightenment out of Heaven itself. That conjugial love in the future is to be the precious jewel of the New Church in all its branches. I believe it is from these teachings that women will gain a new respect and certainly bring the world to a new sight of the beauty of marriage between one man and one wife where there can be no domination. In their inward spiritual growth they can become one -- she the love of his wisdom and he in wisdom from her love.

The most important point I believe there is to make about Conjugial love-- is that it really is what is of the Lord that is to be loved in the other person---Because all that is good or true or what is of wisdom or love in the man or in the wife is from The Lord." (end)

Let us explore further what the Writings say about the role of men and women in relation to truth and love. Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 8994:[4] So it is that those who are spiritually perceptive have a liking for women with an affection for truths, but not for women who concentrate on gaining knowledge. For it is in keeping with Divine order for men to know things and for women purely to have an affection for them, so the women do not love themselves because of their knowledge but love men; and from this springs the desire for marriage. (...)

It should be recognized however that this is the situation among those who belong to the Lord's spiritual kingdom, whereas among those who belong to His celestial kingdom the reverse applies. There husbands are the ones with affection, and wives are the ones with knowledge of good and truth; and this is what the desire for marriage springs from among them. (AC 8994)

These two paragraphs show that husbands and wives go through two phases of development as they grow into a conjugial couple. The first phase is called here "the Lord's spiritual kingdom" while the second phase is referred to as His celestial kingdom." Elsewhere it is clarified that "spiritual kingdom" refers to the mental state in which we love the neighbor, while the "celestial kingdom" refers to the mental state in which we love the Divine Human. The celestial state is higher because it is focused on the Divine Human, and from that, focused on the neighbor. The spiritual state is lower because it is focused on the neighbor, and from that, focused on the Lord. Those who are in the spiritual heaven of their mind (second heaven) love truth first, and thence they love good. Those who are in the celestial heaven of their mind (third heaven) love good first, and thence they love truth. 

When married partners are preparing for a heavenly conjugial  life they evolve through stages of development (see Section xx). In the first phase called "spiritual kingdom," the husband's role is "to know things" and the wife's role is "purely to have an affection for them." In other words, husbands have knowledge of the world while wives have the love for that knowledge in their husbands. Of course the husband must have a love for acquiring knowledge since without this motivation, he cannot acquire anything. Of course women can also acquire knowledge, as much or more than men, but the motivation of women to acquire knowledge is different from the motivation of men.  Men have a love for acquiring knowledge of the world, and their focus is on the knowledge in their mind. They love to have it in their mind, to understand it, and to be able to think it and talk about it. While women can also do this, they are more interested in the men than in the knowledge about the world.

Women are in a celestial state regarding marriage while husbands begin in a spiritual state and must learn to think and behave in the celestial state, after abandoning their spiritual state. When a husband moves into his celestial state, he is joining his wife in the state she already is in. Now they have reached a new phase in their relationship. The passage above (AC 8994) tells us that the new phase is an exact reversal of the older state. In the spiritual state it was the husband's knowledge that is primary but in the celestial state it is the wife's knowledge that is primary, and the husband becomes the love of his wife's knowledge or perception. The wife's superior wisdom at the celestial level allows the husband's superior love to be activated. By thinking from the wife's wisdom, the husband in the celestial state is enabled to receive a higher form of love or good  from the Divine Human. In this way, the couple having been in an external state of conjunction in the spiritual state, now find themselves in an internal state of conjunction in the celestial state.

The Doctrine of the Wife is for husbands in the spiritual state who are aspiring to reach their celestial state. But husbands who are in the spiritual state and not yet aspiring to the celestial state, do not accept the Doctrine of the Wife.

For more on the spiritual psychobiology of marriage see Section xx. 

Another passage, AC 5897, says that "celestial people have no desire at all to know facts .... For everything they know grows out of celestial good present with them and that good would perish if they were to resort to factual knowledge. Indeed since celestial good is present with members of the Lord's celestial kingdom, and celestial truth is charity whereas spiritual truth is faith, they refuse even to speak of faith, for fear that they may come down from good and look back ..." Facts, or factual knowledge about the world, are external to our loves. Factual knowledge comes by observation with the senses. This knowledge is made of an order that belongs to the physical world. When we are in the heaven of our mind all factual knowledge is in the external memory so that we can look down upon it from our heavenly position. But what they know about the spiritual world, that is the mental world of good and truth, does not enter from an external source, but from internal perception. All knowledge about good and truth in heaven come spontaneously to the celestial angels. Whatever they are curious about and focus their mind on it, is illuminated in their perception of it. They do not have to be instructed or told by others. They perceive directly the answer to any questions they wonder about.  But in the spiritual heaven, people have no immediate perception whether something is true or good, so that they must think about and analyze it in terms of what they know from written revelation.  So they benefit from instruction about Sacred Scripture.

In the conjugial state of celestial marriage the wife is given factual perceptions about the husband which the husband himself does not perceive. Hence it is that he must rely on his wife's celestial wisdom regarding all things relating to the marriage relationship.

11.3.5.4  Hellish Marriages and the Female Dominance Model

I have not included the female dominance model in the ennead charts of marriage (see Section xx) because it only occurs infrequently with most married couples. Not much is known about it by experts except that it is a kind of a male dominance joke fantasy in the minds of men. We are all familiar with the female dominant character in drama, literature, and mythology where female "harpies" and "furies" are portrayed in a scary appearance -- snakes in the hair, distorted face, shabby clothes, fiery eyes, dirty long finger nails, etc. Today people say about some women that they are "witches" or "vampires" or "black widow spiders" in their "man-eating" habits and powers. Some dominant women in politics are labeled "the Iron Lady" and some women in business are called "men crushers." In TV drama and soaps, there is the portrayal of women who have relationships with "weak men" who act like they are their "puppy dogs." So the idea of the "female dominant model" is well known to people. But ask yourself how many women you know who fit this characteristic? It's not something women ordinarily do, though it's possible for many more women to do it than actually do. Why?

Because female dominance is the opposite of the mental state in which women ordinarily feel fulfilled and safe -- which is mental intimacy and conjunction with the man they love. The female dominance pattern is therefore special in the sense that it occurs outside the ordinary pattern of women. The motivation women have in the female dominance model is to control the man's sensorimotor and affective behavior without at the same time involving the cognitive behavior. She is not trying to convince him of anything, only making sure he obeys her orders. She is not trying to achieve affective intimacy but only affective control as a means of sensorimotor control, which is what she always wants to do. That's how she sees him in the relationship.

The male dominance model has the potential of being supportive and adaptive to the marriage relationship, especially if the husband moves on the the equity model, and beyond. But the female dominance model does not have any way of supporting or adapting to the marriage relationship. It is contrary to the genuine and organic function of marriage, which is to achieve affective and cognitive intimacy, by which conjunction is achieved, and thus the celestial state of eternal happiness (see Section xx).

Swedenborg had an amazing opportunity to gather data from men and women who are already in the spiritual world and are able to discuss the details of their lives on earth. In the following passage from the Writings, there is a description of some of these "hellish marriages"  after they arrive in the spiritual world. Note the opening sentence that "Hellish marriages are possible in the world" which means that there are marriages in this world that are "hellish marriages" where the couple appears normal in their overt interactions but in their thoughts and feelings they hate and denigrate each other privately. Remember that Swedenborg here is speaking to women and men in the spiritual world.

CL 292. (xxi) Hellish marriages are possible in the world between couples who are inwardly out-and-out enemies, but outwardly the best of friends.

Wives of this description in the spiritual world have forbidden me to speak openly about these marriages. For they are afraid of the skills which enable them to gain power over their husbands being revealed at the same time, when they want nothing more than to keep them concealed. But since I am encouraged by men in that world to disclose the reasons for their peculiar hatred, I might almost say the rage introduced into their hearts against their wives as the result of their secret skills, I should like simply to present the following remarks.

The men said that without being aware of it they had acquired a terrifying fear of their wives. This made them unable to do anything but submissively obey their orders, deferring to their whims more humbly than the meanest servants, so that they became as it were nobodies. They said that it was not only those who hold no important position who took this attitude to their wives, but also men of high rank, even powerful and distinguished leaders. After being reduced to such terror, they dare not talk with their wives in any but friendly fashion, or do anything which did not please them, despite the intense hatred they felt for them in their hearts. They added that their wives still talked and behaved politely to them, and meekly gave in to some of their requests.

[2] Now since the men themselves were very puzzled about the source of such a strong antipathy on the part of the women at the inner levels, while they showed almost sympathy at the outer levels, they went to women expert in that secret skill to investigate it. They told me that they had it from the women's own lips, that females keep very deeply hidden the skill that enables them to subject men, if they wish, to the yoke of their control. Uneducated wives do this by alternately scolding and being nice. In other cases they do it by keeping constantly a stern and severe expression on their faces, in other similar cases by other means. Wives of the educated classes do it by keeping up obstinate demands without a break, and by stubborn resistance to their husbands, if they treat them badly, insisting on the equal rights conferred by law, to which they cling determinedly. In fact, they claim that even if they are thrown out of their homes, they will come back as soon as they please and continue to make similar demands. For they know that men's nature does not allow them to resist their wives' obstinacy, and that once they have given in they submit to their control. Then the wives when in control put on a show of politeness and flattery to their husbands.

The real reason for wives establishing their control by this trickery is that a man's actions are directed by his intellect, a woman's by her will. The will can be obstinate, but not the intellect. I was told that the worst women of this sort, who are totally hooked on the pursuit of domination, can keep up their obstinacy to the point of risking their lives.

[3] I have also heard the defense women put up, to explain why they resorted to using this skill. They claimed that they would never have started, had they not foreseen that if they became subject to their husbands, they would have been utterly despised, rejected and ruined. It was therefore necessity which made them take up arms. They added this warning to men, to leave wives their rights, and when at intervals they are cold to them, not to consider them as more worthless than servant-girls. They also said that many of their sex are by nature too timid to pursue such a course; but I interjected that they were by nature too modest.

These experiences have now made me aware what sort of marriages are meant by hellish marriages in the world, between couples who are inwardly out-and-out enemies and outwardly the best of friends. (CL 292)

Let us summarize the main points given in the above passage regarding how certain wives subdue their husbands into doing what the women want.

1. Some types of marriage relationships are called "hellish marriages" in which husband and wife "are inwardly out-and-out enemies, but outwardly the best of friends."

2. These are female dominant marriages in which the wife deliberately uses secret or "concealed" methods to subjugate the husband and to suppress all resistance to her will.

3. Husbands who feel manipulated in this way and compelled to obey, develop "a terrifying fear of their wives" and an inner hatred for them.

4. The men in this mental state are completely submissive like servants and feel "like nobodies."

5. There are husbands in this type of relationship throughout the status spectrum of society.

6. Once the husbands are "reduced to such terror" the husband wife simulate overt friendship and polite dialog with each other.

7. Less educated women use female dominance techniques such as "alternately scolding and being nice," and "keeping constantly a stern and severe expression on their faces." More educated women "do it by keeping up obstinate demands without a break," or "by stubborn resistance to their husbands," and by "insisting on the equal rights conferred by law."

8. Female dominance techniques against husbands may involve threats to harass the husbands even if they are separated or divorced. " For the wives know that men's nature does not allow them to resist their wives' obstinacy, and that once the husbands have given in they submit to wives' control."

9. Once the wives are in control they "put on a show of politeness and flattery to their husbands."

10. Wives who use "trickery" in "pursuit of domination" are successful because women have a greater capacity for obstinacy than men in relationship warfare. "A man's actions are directed by his intellect, a woman's by her will. The will can be obstinate, but not the intellect."

11. Women who manipulate husbands into submission are motivated by self-defense, since "if they became subject to their husbands, they would have been utterly despised, rejected and ruined. It was therefore necessity which made them take up arms."

12. Female domination of husbands would not occur if the husbands would do the following:
    (a) respect the wife's human rights and provide for her financially in case they are separated or divorced;
    (b) respect the wife's dignity and not treat her with disrespect when the husband feels "cold to her" (e.g., angry or busy or un-sexy or involved with someone else).

Swedenborg ends the passage with: "These experiences have now made me aware what sort of marriages are meant by hellish marriages in the world, between couples who are inwardly out-and-out enemies and outwardly the best of friends." Marriages governed by the female dominance model are called "hellish" because the husband and wife are inwardly enemies despite the show they make on the surface that they are getting along and are even friends. This inward hostility and hatred they have for one another means that they are mentally separated. They are not capable of getting together mentally, which means they cannot agree on anything, but only pretend that they agree. Couples who care for one another are not enemies inwardly, but friends. They can agree on many things and be "one one mind." But in hellish marriages the partners are of a "divided mind."

When both partners are in the spiritual world, they are reunited as a married couple. How long they stay together depends on their mental states. In the case of hellish marriages on earth, the husband and wife reunite in the world of spirits, once both are there. At that point everything is different from what it was on earth where they both had their conscious awareness in the natural mind which was attached to the physical body and senses. But now that they are in the world of spirits, they both have their conscious awareness in the spiritual mind which was unconscious before. Now they continue their relationship, but at a more inward level of mentality. They can no longer interact by orienting to the physical world. For example, the wife is no longer anxious in being financially protected now that she is living in her immortality where everything is free and created on the spot by one's desires and intentions (see Section xx).

Now she has lost all need or motivation to be with a person she hates or dislikes or resents. In fact the laws of the spiritual world dictate that people who have incompatible feelings and thoughts cannot communicate or remain present to each other. Very quickly, possibly within the first hour of interaction, the couple may decide to be separated, never to see each other again. Or it may take longer, depending on the interaction history they have had and their current character and personality.

It's interesting to note that women do not naturally prefer to dominate their husbands, but they are driven to to it by desperation, fearing they will be seduced, abused, and abandoned -- as indeed commonly happens in all countries even today. The female dominance model is therefore practiced in self-defense against husbands who would rob them of their rights and abandon them to a cruel cultural environment that discriminates against women. Note carefully that the male dominance model does not imply such evil exploitation of women. Husbands who think from the traditional male dominance model (level 1) have a strong motivation to provide financially for their wife and to protect her from disrespect and poverty. And yet we can witness from so many "ugly" divorce cases, and "dead beat" fathers, that men are often reluctant to benefit their former wife financially and to treat them with dignity and respect. This indicates that all along, even when they appeared friends and lovers, they were in fact inwardly disloyal and hateful to each other.

11.3.6  The Spiritual Dimension to the Unity Model

Psychology exists in two versions. One is called the negative bias, while the other is called the positive bias. The negative bias leads to materialism and non-theistic psychology. The positive bias leads to theistic psychology (see Section xx). Since theistic psychology is a dualist perspective, it addresses the connection between this life and the afterlife. In fact it elevates the importance of knowing this connection to a matter more important than life or death. In the positive bias, we remain scientific and empirically oriented, but we rely on facts gathered by Swedenborg in his eyewitness exploration of the "the spiritual world" of the afterlife. To me, one of the most amazing and happy of the discoveries Swedenborg made is that we live life in heaven in a conjugial state. He interviewed many "celestial" couples who had lived on earth thousands of years ago. And they were forever together with their childhood sweethearts, living in the fullness of their youth, in company of other conjugial couples, each enjoying their private houses which are magnificent, according to Swedenborg precise descriptions of them.  This is conjugial unity in heaven to eternity. Endless happiness and joy increasing daily.

Swedenborg himself was attracted to this type of life and he wondered why everybody else isn't in the state of heaven in their mind? Given his special Divinely appointed mission, Swedenborg was given the ability to visit the heavens and the hells that every human being contains in their mind. In other words, heaven and hell are not only have an individual mental reality but a communal one called the spiritual world of the afterlife. In other words, when we pass on we awaken in the spiritual world and continue our immortal life there (see Section xx). This life of immortality is either in the heaven of our mind or in the hells of our mind. What determines our ultimate destination in immortality depends on the traits we have accumulated while living in this life. If we are willing to let go of our hellish traits, which are ego-biased and not based on rationality, we can experience what kind of heaven we can live in with the heavenly traits we acquired, which are based on being useful to society and considerate of others (see Section xx).

In other words, if you can be eternally happy with heavenly traits, you're in. But if you cannot be eternally happy just with the heavenly traits, you're out. And that means sinking into the depths and quagmires of our hell. Of course there are gradations of hell, depending on how much people are willing to give in to their savage desires and insane thoughts. Swedenborg observed that the people on the hells of their mind also appear to themselves as living together as couples in dingy, dark, and stench filled habitations. But these couples are not love with each other but in hatred. Swedenborg has disturbing descriptions of how much they hate each other and try to injure one another constantly. But the couples in heaven are kept together by mental unity, which is the maximum possible intimacy a married couple can experience.

 After reading and appreciating Swedenborg's reports, which amount to about 30 volumes in English translation, I looked for ways to apply this new knowledge to my life, and my marriage was the most obvious place for me to focus on. At that point I was already in my early forties and had been basking complacently in the equity model of marriage most of the time, and the male dominance model some of the time. I was content because I could opt out any time I wanted from the equity expectations simply by slipping back into the male dominance model. Then, after having my way, I could slip back into the equity model and take credit for being a reasonable, kind, civilized, and modern husband. This was a fraudulent equity model and my poor wife was suffering, having to live her life in the loneliness of her mental intimacy where I would not venture myself. Nor would I allow her into the mental intimacy of my mind, which she experienced as slippery and without real inner principles. She recognized that I was a slave to my inherited traits and that it was taking me down the path of hell. No heavenly life could exist amidst such feelings of male superiority that I had internalized.

When I came upon the Writings of Swedenborg I quickly realized that they were genuine and scientific. For the first time in human history husbands have available direct evidence of what it will be like for them if they retain the dominance-equity model vs. acquiring a new way of interacting with the wife called the unity model. I appreciated being given that opportunity. And when I saw what it's really going to be like, I backed off with horror from the dominance-equity model and formulated for myself a new approach which I called the unity model.

From the moment of committing myself to the unity model I had a new motive to help me change in all the areas of my relationship with my wife. I had a simple method, but totally effective. Whatever I felt like doing, saying, or thinking about any issue between us, I asked myself: Is this from heaven or from hell? The effectiveness of this method is that there are no in betweens. Equity arguments don't work. Dominance arguments work even less. I had no choice but to pick one or the other. No shades of in between, no conditional exceptions or justifications. It's a categorical and unconditional decision. And incalculable benefits or harm will result in the how I choose as a pattern. I can make mistakes along the way. But it is the cumulative pattern that indicates which direction I'm going in.

Swedenborg's reports allow me to fill in the precise consequences of choosing to go my heavenly way or my hellish way when I interact with my wife. I am motivated to live in a heavenly life in which I am eternally conjoined to my wife so that we no longer are two but one. Once I officially and publicly committed myself to this goal, my wife was able to help me in a decisive way. Before this, I neutralized her methods and resisted them. I remained who I was. I did not let her change me. I did not join her in her mental intimacy. I kept he rout of my mental intimacy. We were two people separated by two different minds. But then, we started becoming one-minded when I censored most of my spontaneous feelings, thoughts, and reactions, and labeled them as coming  from hell. There was a little space left as a result. In that little space I was able to insert a heavenly reaction, thought, or feeling. Suddenly my wife felt like I broke into her long suffering loneliness and neglect. I saved her, as I should have done, right from the beginning we met. Better late than never. And now I'm sharing the unity model with others.

The section on Field Observations below will give you analytic tools that are effective in monitoring your interactions and the interactions of couples you know. Until we learn how to monitor our interactions objectively, we only have an inaccurate and  biased view of ourselves. Try to memorize the tables or charts. Once they are in your conscious awareness, you will be able to use them to identify the interactions you are observing. The more you use the charts for your observations, the more your rational understanding will be enriched.