It is one of the known facts of life in the world today that after the first days of a marriage are over, rivalry over rights and power begins to affect the couple. They speak of rights, asserting that equality is laid down by the terms of the compact entered into, and each has his proper place in performing the duties of his station; of power, asserting that men insistently claim the superiority in all matters at home, because they are men, and they assign inferiority to women, because they are women. Such rivalry in households today are due to nothing but the lack of any consciousness of truly conjugial love and the lack of any feeling of how blessed that love is. Their absence substitutes for that love a desire which counterfeits that love. This desire, in the absence of the genuine love, makes people ambitious for power. Some people get this ambition from the pleasure of a love of mastery, some have it implanted by crafty women before the wedding, and some are unaware of it.

[2] Men with that ambition, who after the ups and downs of rivalry establish control, reduce their wives either to accepting their rights or deferring to their decisions, or to servitude; in each case the result depends on how strong that ambition is and what kind of underlying state they have buried in their personality. However, if wives have that ambition, and after the ups and downs of rivalry gain control, they reduce their husbands either to equality of rights with themselves, or to deference to their decisions, or to servitude. But once wives have wrested control from their husbands, they live a companionable life with them since they retain a desire which counterfeits conjugial love and is restrained by the law and the fear of a legal separation, if they stretch their powers beyond what is permissible and go too far.

[3] It is impossible to give a brief description of the nature of love and friendship between a dominant wife and a subservient husband, as well as between a dominant husband and a subservient wife. In fact, pages would not be enough to classify all their differences into species and to list them, so varied and diverse are they. There are differences which depend on the nature of men's ambitions, and likewise on women's ambitions. Those of men differ from those of women. For such men can only experience a foolish kind of friendship based on love, and such women only a friendship based on a spurious kind of love arising from desire. The skills which enable wives to gain power over their husbands will be discussed in the next section.