I am a member of an advice site that deals strictly with relationships - friends, marriages or other romantic relationships, careers, whatever. I've seen so many women come on to this site complaining about the fact that their men look at porn and subsequently, the men scrambling to defend their gender explaining that it's completely natural to look at porn. After all, we're all sexual creatures, and would you rather he cheated on you, and it's all about your self-esteem, get over it.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I disagree wholeheartedly.
1. Humans are not sexual creatures. One of the most important qualities that differentiates a human from an animal is our ability to control our more sexual sides. We possess the mental capacity to avoid sexual activity simply by avoiding temptation.
2. You should never have to choose between your man doing something that makes you completely uncomfortable and cheating on you. If you are uncomfortable with him watching porn for any reason, he should stop. That is simply respect. If he feels the need to cheat on you because he's not watching porn, then you don't want to be with him anyway.
3. I do, however, agree that this is about self-esteem. The self-esteem required to make your man respect you. It is not unrealistic to expect that your man should look at you and you alone. We have given men this get-out-of-monogamy free card for entirely too long by letting them indulge their perversions in the name of "nature." Your man's eyes, his heart, and *ahem* other parts of his anatomy belong to you, and you alone. Not a TV screen, not a hoochie that's walking by in a short skirt, not an ex-girlfriend.
Men, please try to break your addictions to porn. If it were a completely natural indulgence, it wouldn't cause such heartache in the women of this world. I understand that it's hard to go without at first, but once you start, it eventually becomes a whole lot easier to avoid completely. Save your heart and your eyes for the woman that you love.
Thank you, Drew, for being a real man.
3 months ago
7 comments:
I think, though, that you're lumping a wide range of behavior into one category: "porn addict." Having a glass of wine at dinner is far from getting hammered and passing out every night after Hee Haw. And looking at nekkid pictures can range from a pinup poster to 24x7 addiction to the harshest pronography. The motivations and effects are quite different.
Bilogically, men are prone to drift. That's just genetics. Looking at a lady in a short skirt as she walks by is harmless and often instinctive. It has no bearing on how one feels about one's mate, any more than a belch is a critical appraisal of cooking.
But you are correct that humans have the ability to choose and - to a certain extent - choose to override certain conscious behaviors. These choices are not always so easy to make. Ask a smoker how chosing to stop smoking affects their actual ability to stop smoking. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."
On the extreme end, where men spend copious amounts of time and money looking at porn, a problem can exist. If a man pays money to look at another woman, I think the guy needs to evaluate his situation as well as his problem. But spending a little extra time on the swimsuit section of Sports Illustrated is not disrespect, it's genetics.
Nature cannot disagree with itself. It cannot be biological for a woman to instinctively want to protect her family unit and for a man to threaten that family unit by looking at another woman the way he should only look at his woman. Such indulgences are learned and historically damaging behavior.
Thank you for visiting my blog!
Human males were designed to fertilize and run, fertilize and run. The biological imperative is to pass on the genetic code to as many partners as possible before dying. The female is hardwired to slow down and protect her young. Marriages and the family are a relatively new invention, created by the human ability to think beyond biology.
And, really, in 99% of the cases, looking at another woman doesn't pose any risk to the existing family unit. As one philospher put it, "I don't care where my husband gets his appetite, as long as he comes home to eat."
Interesting blog. :)
What about women that like to look at porn?
A coworker of mine says he and his wife rent porn movies all the time.
Normally I avoid this topic like the plague because, especially among those of my age group, I am considered a fuddy duddy because I find something inherantly wrong with porn. Namely, the part where women, children and occasionally hapless barnyard animals, are exploited for the purpose of feeding someone's darker fetish. I will agree that there is a vast difference between having a glass of wine and being an alcoholic. I will agree that looking at playboy is not the same as looking at child pornography. But I will also say that people who read playboy do NOT do so for the articles. If they wanted interesting articles, they would subscribe to the New Yorker.
And backtracking, just a little - perhaps is it plausible that men are biologically programmed to drift. But that's why we have brains and free will - if we all operated on pure instinct, the would would be a very different and wholly uncivilized place.
If penguins can be monogamous, so can humans.
*that should say 'world' would be a very different....
i feel the same way about cheating. people don't just accidentally cheat, it stems from a mindset where for whatever reason they make themselves emotionally available to cheat. i have cheated so i know what i am talking about. the best way not the cheat is to not want to cheat. the best way to not look at porn is to not count on that for excitement and be happy with what you have. which means that if you look at porn, you have to look at the reasons WHY you want to, and go on from there.
Post a Comment