Is Kindness Possible in Love?

Kindness in Love Is Aesthetic

In a class some years ago, I asked about something which is related to what George Eliot describes in Hetty Sorrel—the inability to be deeply affected by things—which troubles women very much. What stops a woman from having the big feeling she hopes for in sex? There have been thousands of articles in women's magazines showing how worried women can be, but only Aesthetic Realism explains why.

Like many women, I was troubled because I never had the large feeling I hoped for in sex. I would pretend and later feel like a fraud.

I learned that what stops a woman from having feeling in sex is exactly the same as what stops her from having feeling about the world as a whole. In The Right Of Ellen Reiss writes:

The only way sex will be sensible, beautiful, and kind is if it is a continuation of the desire to know—not a substitute for it, not a saying, "People aren't worth thinking about deeply, but they should make me glorious." Sex is what it was meant to be when a person feels about another: "You stand for a world I want to know and never stop knowing."

Early in my marriage, though I had changed a very great deal, I felt there was an impediment in me to being more affected by my husband and I asked about this in an Aesthetic Realism class. I said sometimes I was aware of myself having an effect. Ellen Reiss asked me:

Do you think this matter of feeling you are affecting a man through [how you look] has anything to do with your not feeling what you want to feel?

Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman.  I think so.

Miss Reiss showed that when a woman does affect a man, it isn't just herself that's affecting him—it's the world. It is both personal and impersonal, intimate and wide. A woman has reality's opposites such as straight line and curve, logic and emotion, power and grace, sweetness and strength. "If a woman wants two things," Miss Reiss explained, "for a man to honor the world but also to make her the most important thing—it can make for certain impasses."

I had that impasse. Ellen Reiss showed that there are two reasons for a woman's not having a fulness of feeling as she is close to a man. The first is ethical: she is deeply afraid that in sex she will have contempt for the world and the man, and also be used by him for contempt. The second is, she feels something standing for the outside world—a man—has too much meaning.

I understood better why, sometimes, after having large feeling about my husband, I would suddenly find myself giving him an order, or get very busy cleaning the house. Ellen Reiss asked: "If you are affected fully will it be too much of a tribute to what isn't you?" 'Yes," I said. A man stands for the world different from us and we can either be angry that he affects us, or grateful that he has so much meaning, and want to know him as deeply as we can.

This discussion changed me tremendously. I am grateful to feel now as I am close to Bennett that he stands for a world I want increasingly to know and be affected by; and this has made for passionate emotion that takes in both my mind and body. I love Aesthetic Realism for enabling women—and men—to respect ourselves on this great subject of kindness and sex.

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