Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/208

 *gressiveness can appear to be rude and crude to her. It can frighten her. Afterward she may confront him with it, accusing him of strutting, of showing off, of cock-of-the-walk behavior. She is merely confronting him with his maleness again.

A very odd difference between men and women is the difference in their reactions to pain and fatigue. Women have a very high threshold for both, and most men have a relatively low one. If a woman gets a burn on her hand she can stick it in butter or in cold water and go on making the dinner. A man with the same burn could be completely incapacitated for a while—and awfully angry at himself besides. The same is true of all sorts of minor aches and illnesses that occur in the normal course of events. Because of this difference in pain thresholds, men tend to pamper themselves or want to be pampered when they have head colds, headaches, sore throats, or other minor illnesses that a woman might ignore. The frigid woman, of course, finds this difference a rich mine to work. She can and does use it to taunt her husband with his "weakness," again showing her essential ignorance of and lack of sympathy with the male nature.

Of course sex itself remains one of the most fruitful sources for resentment and misunderstanding in the frigid woman. Here male aggression can be most clearly seen. The man is stimulated easily by things that would not excite his woman in the least. He is susceptible erotically to all sorts of sights, sounds, and odors. His wife undressing may excite him; her perfume may excite him; he may become aroused if she is looking wan or looking bright-eyed. The frigid woman, not comprehending male reactions or their plural causes, generally feels that his lust is unselective and impersonal. She takes his ardor as an affront for that reason.

In the sexual act the aggressive thrusting of the penis of