Drama can have cathartic effect, release emotion and enlarge one’s energies and self-understanding. Reality, however, is quite a different matter. Trust and affection, as much or more than imagination, are essential for the games. Imaginative sex is only for individuals who truly care for one another. Indeed, these would be the only individuals who would be likely to so expose their egos and bodies to one another, to so put themselves at the mercy of the other. In short, if the self-expressions essential in these games reveal constant and vicious traits in the partners, then the partnership, presumably, should be terminated. No one wishes to live with an enemy. It is immoral to do so. If love games give individuals an avenue for revealing themselves to one another as authentic enemies, this should have value.

If you are married to someone who hates you, but, for social reasons, or because of his conditioning, conceals this, it is well for you to find it out. You can then look for someone who will love you, and so, too, can he or she. Frankly, however, if a husband and wife hate one another, they are not likely to need imaginative sex to find it out. They will know it already. Further, to some extent, we all build up hostilities toward those we most love. There is a difference, of course, between the natural irritations accrued in living together, and deep hatred. It is doubtless healthy, in a love context, to rid ourselves of certain accumulated emotions of resentment or aggression. We all accumulate these. It is then a question as to how they are to be ventilated. Normally we do so by screaming at one another and treating each other cruelly. It seems to me there are better ways, more satisfactory ways, better humored, more delightful ways.

Suppose, for example, your wife has dented the fender of your new car. Instead of screaming and yelling, or gritting one’s teeth and telling her that everything is perfectly all right, you inform her, jocularly, that she will be punished that night. Then, that night, to your mutual delight, she is “punished,” perhaps by some variant on the bitch game. In the morning you do not care if she dents the other fender. You have, symbolically, taken out your irritation, have taken it out on her ass, so to speak, and she, too, in the delights of the play feels that she has now “made it up,” and knows, truthfully, that now things are all right again. There is no pretending at forgiveness. Forgiveness is irrelevant. The price has been paid. Accounts are square. He has, symbolically, taken it out of your hide, exactly as you felt he should.