Or were they?

When a New England wife complained, first to her pastor and then to the whole congregation, that her husband was neglecting their sex life, the church proceeded to excommunicate the man.
A leading Puritan preacher, in giving an exposition of Proverbs 5:18-19 (which compares a wife to ‘the loving hind and pleasant roe’), claimed that the hind and roe were chosen because they are most enamoured of their mates “and even mad again in their heat and desire for them.”
Another Puritan, Thoms Hooker wrote,

“The man whose heart is endeared to the woman he loves … dreams of her in the night, hath her in his eye and apprehension when he awakes, museth on her as he sits at the table, walks with her when he travels … She lies in his bosom, and his heart trusts in her, which forceth all to confess that the streams of his affections, like a mighty current, runs with full tide and strength.”

The modern stereotype stubbornly refuses to be reconciled with the statements of the Puritans themselves. Can it be that the modern image is wrong? One who thinks so describes the Puritan marriage ideal as ‘a perfect sharing’ and calls it ‘Puritanism’s greatest and most admirable cultural achievement.’

Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints, The Puritans as They Really Were, Zondervan Publishing House, pp. 39-40