In 1920, two of her favourite female students left her to marry. She thought they had betrayed their work with her and their obligation to music. Her attitude to women in music was contradictory: despite Lili's success and her own eminence as a teacher, she held throughout her life that a woman's duty was to be a wife and mother According to Ned Rorem, she would "always give the benefit of the doubt to her male students while overtaxing the females". She saw teaching as a pleasure, a privilege and a duty: "No-one is obliged to give lessons. It poisons your life if you give lessons and it bores you."