The married woman’s dual struggle produces chronic anxiety and nervousness

Evidence

But generally the woman wants to “hold on to” her husband as well as to refuse his domination. She struggles against him to defend her autonomy, and she fights against the rest of the world to conserve the “situation” that dooms her to dependence. This double game is difficult to play, which explains in part the worried and nervous state in which multitudes of women spend their lives. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1320

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier chapters on the situation of woman and to Sartre’s concept of bad faith — the double game of defending autonomy while preserving dependence. — connects to: Newly married women suffer depression, boredom, and disgust at marital intimacy; A woman in love feels danger constantly because she has alienated her whole being — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1879; Married women resort to imaginary passion to avoid risking real affairs — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1612 (+1 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: the psychological cost of playing two contradictory games simultaneously — a mechanism visible beyond marriage in politics, workplaces, and colonized identities.

Broader Connections

• A woman in love feels danger constantly because she has alienated her whole being #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1879
• Total dependence reduces a wife’s freedom to abstract interiority that cannot save her #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1355
• Married women resort to imaginary passion to avoid risking real affairs #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1612