45 thoughts on “The Church, Women and Barbeques”

1. Interesting. I think many men have been needlessly shamed by false teachings about lust, and recently I’ve seen Matthew 5:27-28 really misused. That’s kind of sad because we are wonderfully and fearfully made and intended to enjoy our design.

   The men around here sometimes say, “I’m not lusting, I’m admiring,” which makes me laugh, but it fits in well with scripture. To admire is to pay tribute to what someone has, to praise them for it. To covet is to envy and desire to relieve them of what they have.

   As to porn, I think there’s some real dangers for men there. Perhaps not all men are vulnerable, but enough of them can testify to having been damaged that it concerns me. Also, many people who star in porn are not happy, they’re compelled to exploit themselves for money and it’s an ugly industry. We’re watching people engage in sin, sin that is harmful to them, and we’re doing it for our own entertainment. That’s just not right. But fantasy, imagination, those are all God designed aspects of who we are, so I agree with you there.

2. Insanity,

   There are three separate issues here in my opinion and here are my opinions on each.

   1. As the heart of this article suggests, I do not believe it is wrong for men to have sexual imaginations of women. What they need to be careful of is that their sexual imagination does not turn to sexual covetousness.

   2. Porn addition is as real as food addiction or any other kind of addiction. Some men are compelled to look at porn all the time to the neglect of their other life responsibilities(family, job, other) and it overpowers them and takes over their life. But just because some people can become addicted to something does not make it bad. I know many friends who believe any drinking of alcohol is wrong because some people might become addicted to it, but just because something has the potential for abuse does not make it wrong – only the abuse of it is.

   3. I am not a supporter of the porn industry or unmarried people having sex in any situation, whether it is captured on film or done in private. But it is possible to find a lot amateur erotica online(people posing nude or married couples having sex). There are sex scenes in normal movies(as opposed to porn) movies that are just simulated sex. It really depends on where a person believes the line is to be drawn. I say all this to say it is possible to view erotic material without supporting the professional porn industry. There is some more I could say on this, but I think I am going to leave it here for now as this by itself is massive challenge to Church tradition.

3. ” it’s the intentions, just as much as the actions that are important.”
   Hey I was directly quoted! Yay! 😉
   No, but seriously, I’m glad you took the time to detail your thoughts on this issue, though I admit my opinion has not changed one bit. I mean, generally I love your articles about biblical gender roles (which is good, since thats the name of the site 😉 ) and I mainly come on here to plan my role as a future wife. But I do find myself disagreeing w you a lot on other issues. I think it’s primarily because your interpretation of the scripture differs widely from the interpretation of my Church.

   Anyway I will post my opinion on this topic, but I first need to ask my priest a bit about this.

4. It goes both ways BGR. While, you have this admiration or even attraction for your neighbor’s wife, your wife might be attracted to her husband, especially (if he treats his wife well), and she would never tell you. No one knows the thoughts or heart of another person. A woman’s heart is a like a deep ocean, full of desires and secrets. It doesn’t mean, she acts upon it either. Also, jealousy goes both ways, and it’s more likely that your wife gets more attention from men, than you do from women. If you are looking at other women, other men are also looking at your wife. Believe me, I know! Two weeks ago, a young man at a meat market told me, “he loved my hair,
   because it’s so full and beautiful (I hear this comment all of the time.)” On Wednesday, out of the blue (I was looking for speech therapy materials at Target) a man passing by my aisle, stopped and looked at me. He told me that I was a “very beautiful woman.” “Yesterday, I was being followed by a man (who was trying to get my attiention) on my way to work. A lot of married men stare at me at the supermarket, and these men are with their wives! I’ve been asked on dates at the gas station, followed, and even stalked! Does my husband know about this? No, but he does know, I get stared at even when I’m with him, and he does get jealous…very jealous!

5. You know, I think it was you who told me that I should not be sleeping with my bf, because that would tempt him into sin. And I agreed and I’ve been trying to limit that. But where is the consistency? If that would tempt him to sin (fornication) then wouldn’t pornography tempt a man into masturbation, or worse, adultery? It’s a slippery slope down to far greater sin.

   And I still believe pornography (and lust) are sins in and of themselves. Let’s examine the verse again.
   “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye makes you stumble, TEAR IT OUT and THROW IT AWAY.” First, notice how the verse goes from ‘lust for her’ immediately to the ‘if your right eye makes you stumble.’ It seems to be quite clear, the verse jumps to the eyes because ‘lust of the eyes’ has everything to do with looking at a woman and sexually desiring her, not thinking of ways to bed her.
   Second, read the language, it’s harsh relative to Jesus’s usual narrative. He seems to be arguing for an active resistance against lust. As does Saint Paul when he says “PUT TO DEATH, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, lust, impurity, passion, evil desire..” I think Jesus and St Paul recognize here that the temptation of flesh is difficult to overcome, but just because something feels natural doesn’t mean it is right. I can’t believe you and insanity made this argument!(“intended to enjoy our design”) We are born with sin, we have to overcome it. I think its possible to overcome it. I’ve also had sexual thoughts, when I meet a really handsome guy I’ll sometimes instinctively think sexually about him, but I repress these thoughts. Yes, these thoughts sometimes come naturally, but we shouldn’t entertain these thoughts.

   Also reflect on St.Paul’s message for marriage:
   “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
   St. Paul does not say ‘better to marry than to commit fornication’ but better to marry than to ‘burn with passion.’ To me, that phrase sounds like St.Paul is saying that we should marry so we can direct all our sexual desire towards the person we are in a union with. St.Paul seems to be criticizing ANY sexual desire outside marriage.

   As for the porn industry… Look at it as a whole.. it’s disgusting. And most men use it solely for masturbation, from what I can tell. Watch married couples?! My Lord… What a husband and wife do in bed is between them and God! Next you are going to tell me threesomes are fine!

6. Emily,

   Let me explain the difference between you and your boyfriend sleeping together in bed and him looking at porn.
   For some of this I will need to be a little more blunt. How much easier would it be for him to have sex cuddled up next to your body in bed them him farther away from you in a bathroom masturbating? Proximity is a HUGE deal when it comes to premarital sex, that is why couples should not be alone together very often before marriage and before the last century with the practice of courtship that was the case where a man and woman were not allowed alone together till they were married.

   Trust me, if your boyfriend were honest with you about this he would tell you that being cuddled up to you with his lower parts right next to your lower parts is FAR more tempting for him to have sex with you then him looking at a picture of a woman and taking care of his need for sexual release.

   I realize you take the position against masturbation because of your Church’s beliefs and I know you would never intentionally want to be cruel to your boyfriend. But I don’t think you realize how cruel it is to make a man go with ZERO sexual release – its like storing up a balloon with no place to go. Yes we hear about nocturnal emissions but you don’t know when that will occur, until then you have to live with the pressure(both physical and emotional pressure) – when God has given you a natural release valve! I also find it humorous that the EXACT same mechanism occurs during masturbation as does during nocturnal emission. A man has a sexual dream(whether about his wife, girlfriend or other any other woman) and he has an orgasm in his sleep. Apparently that is OK according to anti-masturbation advocates when the ONLY difference is he was asleep and not awake. If he had that exact same imagination while he was awake and masturbated he would be sinning, but if was asleep and had that dream and had an orgasm during sleep no sin. I am sorry but on every logical level that makes NO sense.

   I believe you are putting your boyfriend in a greater place to be tempted by telling him he can’t masturbate and use the natural relief valve God has given people to use when they can’t have sex. I hope that if you boyfriend is tempted because he feels he has no way to relief his sexual tension that he will masturbate instead of sleeping with another girl – which is what some men would do.

   If your right eye offend you has everything to with what Christ just said about lust – I agree 100% with you. Again though you are filling in something you want to be there – which is sexual desire. That is nowhere found in the passage. I conclusively showed the context is lusting after(coveting – desire and plan to take possession of) is the context. So what Christ is saying is – if you have a covetous eye, if you have an eye that wants to take possession of all the women you see – if you are constantly thinking of ways to seduce women into having sex with you than cut it out. He is not talking about sexual desire.

   No man would ever marry a woman if he did not have sexual desire for her BEFORE they were married(unless of course it was an arranged marriage), yet your thinking would make that pre-marital sexual desire sin.

   I agree Emily that we need to put to death immorality, lust(covetousness) and impurity, passion(which is uncontrolled) and evil desire – AMEN!

   I also agree that just because something feels naturals doesn’t mean it is right, again AMEN! So we must search the Scriptures to discover what is natural that is by the design of God and what is natural as it relates to our sin nature and needs to be resisted even though it is natural. So if a man feels homosexual desire toward other men and it feels “natural” to him, he needs to resist that “natural” desire because it is part of the corrupted nature(fleshly sinful nature).

   However if your boyfriend desires to have sex with you, or you desire to have sex with him that is a natural feeling that is 100% by the design of God and it does not need to be suppressed, but rather channeled into ways that do not violate God’s law. Insanity and I are talking about not suppressing what was part of the original design of God in men and women BEFORE the fall, and it has nothing to do with our sinful fleshly nature. Now our sin nature wants to take that natural desire for sex, and pervert it into tempting us to have sexual relations before we are married, or to have sex in ways that violate God’s design of sex(like homosexual sex, group sex, bestiality).

   God never tells you have to overcome the sexual desire that he gave you! He tells you not to allow it to be used outside the bounds of his law. Your sexuality is a gift from God, not something you have to “overcome”. It must be channeled to stay within the bounds of God’s law.

   Your statement:
   “St. Paul does not say ‘better to marry than to commit fornication’ but better to marry than to ‘burn with passion.’”

   My Response:
   Emily, actually Paul does say it is better to marry than to commit fornication in this same passage you cite:
   “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
   Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband…

   I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I.
   But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.”
   – I Corinthians 7:1-2 (KJV)

   So the answer is both. He says to avoid fornication people should marry and then he says it is better to marry that burn(a desire to have sex and have no one to be with sexually).

   Again you are filling in what you want it to say, not what he actually says. Paul does not say we should marry so all our sexual desire will be focused on that person. No person can 100% fulfill all the sexual desires of another. But while I believe that God gave us masturbation as a release valve, I certainly would never say it is or should ever be a complete substitute for being with a spouse in marriage. There is nothing that compares to the physical and emotional union in the act of sex in marriage. But it can help to relieve sexual tension even for married couples(like when the man travels for work or his wife is ill or medically unable to have sex).

   Emily – Paul tell us to avoid fornication, which in this context refers to sexual relations between a man and woman outside of marriage, we should marry. He does not say “to avoid sexual desire outside of marriage, but rather to avoid the act of sex outside of marriage” we should marry.

   Your statement:
   “As for the porn industry… Look at it as a whole.. it’s disgusting. And most men use it solely for masturbation, from what I can tell. Watch married couples?! My Lord… What a husband and wife do in bed is between them and God! Next you are going to tell me threesomes are fine!”

   My Response:
   Emily as I said to Insanity – I am not defending what the professional porn industry does. On the issue of married couples, when you can supply me with a Scripture passage that restricts a married couple from taking pictures of themselves having sex and posting them on amateur adult picture sites you let me know. I have no idea how you would jump from the sanctity and beauty of a married couple having sex to threesomes.

   Again – I understand that based on your belief that the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church are the authority by which you must live your life then masturbation is wrong for you. This means for you and your boyfriend as Catholics then you cannot masturbate and you must simply burn with sexual passion until you finally marry.

   I also realize that even many protestants disagree with masturbation, and if don’t disagree with masturbation they would disagree with the use of erotic materials.

   Having said all that – I believe the Catholic Church, as well as many Protestant churches are actually causing people to fall into sexual sin by teaching their is no way for a young people to experience their sexuality, on way to release sexual tension before marriage.

   “But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” – Matthew 15:9 (KJV)

   “And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.” – Luke 11:46 (KJV)

   The Catholic Church as well as many other Protestant churches lay heavy burdens on men that they are not able to bare by teaching their traditions as the commands of God. The way the Catholic Church and many Protestant churches actually cause sexual sin to occur is in these ways:

   By forbidding masturbation they open the door to premarital sex. Think of it this way – if you are taught that masturbation AND premarital sex are both sin which one will you do if you fall? The reasoning goes “well if they are both sin, why wouldn’t you have sex which is far more fulling than masturbation.” So many many Catholic and protestant young people fall into pre-marital sex because the Churches teach them there is absolutely no way to relieve their sexual tension and if you going to sin, you might as well go for sex rather than masturbation.

   But if they were taught the truth, that masturbation is NOT sin and is a way that God has given us to relieve our sexual tension before marriage they would have a very different choice when they are tempted. Masturbate which is NOT a sin and relieve that sexual tension, or have pre-marital sex with IS sin.

   So while you may not agree with my teaching on this, I am teaching this because I want young people(including my teens) to AVOID real sexual sin by experiencing their sexuality in a way that does not violate God’s law. I want them to use that natural release valve God has given them to avoid pre-marital sex.

   Do you know how many Christians would admit they may have NEVER had pre-marital sex if they knew masturbation was not a sin and was an option to relieve sexual tension?

7. First, just to clear it up, I sleep with him cause I often have sleeping problems and when I can’t sleep I’ll just go to his house and also I sometimes just monitor what he’s doing. Anyway.. You know.. this is actually a very big issue for me. When I wake up and realize that my bf’s had a nocturnal emission, I often get very depressed. He’s sexually frustrated (as am I) and he claims that being abstinent is affecting his performance as an athlete (he’s a swimmer for the university) and at the gym. So yes I know that I’m being a real b-word to him, and so I’d really, really love to believe that everything that you say on the topic of masturbation and sexual release is true.

   But it isn’t. From what I read and how I interpret it, I just don’t believe it’s allowed. What I gather from St.Paul and Jesus’s statements are that they believed that sex was something entirely between husband and wife. No one else. Not between homosexuals, not between you and yourself. And even if not and, lets say, Onan’s sin was not about masturbation, that still leaves the problem of lust.

   From St.Pauls verse I quoted above, he seemed to be warning against temptations of flesh, as well as other desires.. Bottom line is I don’t believe your logic equivocating lusting to coveting makes sense.
   Also…the bit about intentions. If you look at your neighbors wife, and want to have sex with her (lusting) that is a desire to commit a sin. Whether or not you are coveting (actually planning on comitting the sin) is irrelevant. Paul spoke of evil desires. You mentioned thoughts of homosexuality, bestiality and orgies as evil desires that are sins. Well, having sex with a man or woman outside of wedlock is also an evil desire. I think, if your lustful desire is directed towards your wife or husband, that is perfectly fine. But if it’s directed towards a woman you don’t know… You are not only being tempted by something that is earthly you are also reducing the woman into an object of earthly desire. Sex does not exist without love, so why would I imagine having sex with a man I do not know? Instead, if I have these desires, I should try to get to know his soul. And quickly moving back to masturbating and intentions.. as I said before nocturnal emissions involve no active sexual thought, so you are not actively committing a sin.

   In any case I have to follow my church and lust is defined as thus: Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.

   Will masturbating help people not have sex? Well.. I doubt it. For me it’s not a ‘choose one or the other’ thing. I think its more like a sinful path you go down, first masturbating, then porn, then premarital sex. I only know three of my friends who are abstinent (only one is Christian) and they tell me they don’t masturbate either.

   “On the issue of married couples, when you can supply me with a Scripture passage that restricts a married couple from taking pictures of themselves having sex and posting them on amateur adult picture sites you let me know. ”
   Once again this seems like something we should infer rather than something specifically forbidden.

8. On the one hand, I’m not entirely convinced of the wisdom of comparing women to literal pieces of meat in the article, as it does make it seem as though you’re viewing them purely as sexual objects rather than as attractive people whose looks you happen to admire, which I don’t think was your intent. On the other hand, I do think that you make a lot of really interesting points on the subject of lust, which I think that you rightly equate with covetousness, versus sexual attraction and fantasy. I also can’t help but notice that a lot of the mainstream churches’ teachings on sexual attraction cause more problems and make sexual attraction veer into covetousness faster than it would without those teachings. By making sexual attraction outside of marriage into a sin, they’re causing their followers to obsess over the people to whom they’re attracted far more than they normally would.

   A man who’s content and happy to simply admire a woman whom he considers attractive and doesn’t feel guilty about it probably isn’t going to do anything more about it, unless they’re both single, and he decides to see about getting to know her better and pursuing a relationship that may eventually lead to an engagement and a marriage. Plus, it’s good for men and women to be attracted to the person to whom they’re going to marry. Very few people would choose to marry someone to whom they’re not attracted, though I get the feeling that women in particular don’t give enough weight to this factor in making their choice on whom to date, get engaged to, and marry. Even if it’s an arranged marriage, which I wouldn’t encourage, sexual attraction is something that helps and can’t possibly be considered a negative thing. I’ve also seen some Protestant churches that consider crushes to be sinful as well. Apparently, boys and girls aren’t even supposed to be romantically interested or emotionally invested in the person with whom they pursue a relationship or a courtship, which is more often the model that these people are following. I understand that arranged marriages in the past were successful as often as not, even if they didn’t start out with much romantic love or sexual attraction and that commitment to maintaing the marriage is more essential than anything else in holding the couple together, but actively discouraging emotional and sexual attraction before the marriage seems nonsensical.

   Anyway, back to men who feel guilty about being sexually attracted to a woman who isn’t their wife, even when they’re not married…

   I’ve noticed that in addition to creating self-loathing in men, this attitude also promotes a hatred of the women to whom they’re attracted. They blame the woman for being beautiful and tempting them and often find something amiss with her clothing or her makeup or her jewelry so that they can put their guilt on her. It often doesn’t matter how covered up she is or how loose-fitting her clothing is. She could be wearing a knee-length skirt, and they’re blaming her because they can see her calves and ankles. She could be pants with a more relaxed-fit, and they’ll blame her because they can still see her figure or maybe because she’s wearing sandals and they can see her feet. She could be wearing a sleeveless shirt with wide straps, and they’ll be angry because they can see her shoulders and arms. As the saying goes, the more that you’re required to cover up, the more parts of you become sexy. (I’ve heard cases of Muslim men finding women in burqas incredibly sexy because everything is hidden from view and left to the imagination or because those women appear so holy and committed to their faith.) In doing all of this, they end up developing a hatred for women and shaming women for wanting to play up their looks with flattering clothes and makeup. Then there’s an even uglier side to this where men begin to feel angry at women for inspiring sexual thoughts because she’s not a woman with whom they can have sex. (Non-religious men do this too. They get very angry if a woman turns them on just by how she’s dressed or even just by how pretty she is if she won’t sleep with them.) Thus, sexual fantasies veer into covetousness and hatred.

   Overall, it’s an unscriptural position that has a horrid effect on men and women and honestly promotes self-loathing, misogyny, and covetousness. I know that I’ve mainly talked about this affects men and their view of women rather than how it affects women and their view of men. This is mainly because I don’t see women hating men for being attractive or looking sexy on nearly the same level. It’s more common that I see women either hating their own look and bodies and trying to cover up so as not to tempt men, or that I see women developing a fear of men because they’re led to believe that all men or at least most men are naturally intent on seducing or raping them. Seriously, I’ve seen a Christian man whom I know comparing a woman wearing yoga pants in a public place to a woman walking naked in front of a group of male inmates in a maximum security prison. Apparently, wearing yoga pants is like being naked, and the general male population is just as violent and likely to rape as the population of a men’s maximum security prison! Who knew?

9. Emily, are you and your boyfriend on the same page about believing that abstaining from premarital sex and masturbation is the right thing to do, or is he just doing these things because he loves you and wants to keep you?

10. This all strikes me as very true. I’m also really sorry that so many men do things to you that bother you and make you uncomfortable, and I really hope that your husband doesn’t take his jealousy out on you. 😦

    I also don’t think that too many men besides BGR would be so open-minded about their wives getting turned on by the sight of another man who’s honestly better-looking than they are and then going to relieve that sexual frustration with their husbands. Some men might not be very picky about how they get sex, but most would likely feel hurt, insulted, and even emasculated by knowing that their wife was thinking about someone else during sex. I can also fully understand why women get upset if they figure out that their husband is getting turned on by the sight of a better-looking woman, relieving the built-up frustration with his wife, and thinking about that other woman during sex with his wife. It’s pretty natural and understandable to want your spouse to be thinking about and solely focusing on you during sex.

11. Emily,

    Again – I don’t believe I am going to change your mind on this because you follow the teachings of your church first and foremost so your churches traditions and interpretations will inevitably be the lenses through which you see the Scriptures(and while I disagree with your church’s interpretation, I can respect your holding to it).

    Having said said that I just want to address just a couple statements you made here for our viewing audience.

    Your statement:

    “Bottom line is I don’t believe your logic equivocating lusting to coveting makes sense.”

    My response:

    It’s not my logic to equate lusting with coveting, it is what the Bible says.

    “for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” – Romans 7:7 (KJV)

    Your statement:
    “If you look at your neighbors wife, and want to have sex with her (lusting) that is a desire to commit a sin. Whether or not you are coveting (actually planning on comitting the sin) is irrelevant.”

    My response:
    Let me for my audience attempt to clear up what covetousness is. Covetousness is a result of our sinful nature, our fleshly nature taking desires that are God given and righteous and corrupting them into us wanting to take something that does not belong to us.

    So Emily is really only giving half of what covetousness is, and I apologize for not making that clearer in my post. I have added this definition inside this post to make it clearer what Covetousness is.

    “Covetousness takes our God given desires and corrupts them into the desire to possess those things which he has not given us to possess. Covetousness then moves from the desire to possess into imagining in our mind ways we could take possession of that thing which does not belong to us. Covetousness does not require that we actually act on any imaginations of possession, even just the imaginations in this case become sinful.”

    Emily is alluding to the second part of covetousness, the imagining of scenarios in our mind about how we could take possession of something that does not belong to us. But before the imagining of scenarios of how we could possess the thing that belongs to another, our sinful nature has converted our God given sexual arousal into a sinful desire to possess.

    Going back to my steak on the grill analogy. If I am aroused by the site of my neighbor’s steak and it causes me to go buy steaks for myself the next day no sin has been committed. Arousal and desire are not sin. It is the desire to possess that is sin. Let’s take masturbation out of the equation for the moment(even though I believe there is not one shred of Biblical commands against it). If a man became sexually aroused by the sight of his neighbor’s wife and later that evening had sex with his wife due to his arousal – again no sin has been committed. I realize that blows away all our modern romantic ideas of marriage and relationships, but those types of things have no foundation in Scripture. The Bible does not condemn arousal or desire in and of themselves, it condemns covetousness(the desire to possess something that we cannot possess).

    Now what is interesting in this discussion is no one here would say if your neighbor was grilling steaks and aroused your hunger for steak and then you went out and bought a steak to eat that it was sinful.

    However when it comes to sexual desire(as opposed to the desire for food) we somehow have a double standard. If the sight of neighbor’s wife causes us to be sexually aroused and we enjoy those thoughts of sexual imagination but have zero desire or intent to actually possess her they condemn the mere arousal or imagination that follows that arousal.

    Emily brought up my references to homosexuality, orgies and bestiality as sinful desires. It is absolutely true that some things in and of themselves are a sin even to desire. It is a sin to even desire or imagine yourself having homosexual sex, being in an orgy or engaging in bestiality. There is no context in which these types of sexual acts could ever be right.

    However when it comes to normal heterosexual sex between a man and a woman this is a God given desire, a good and righteous desire as opposed to a fleshly and wicked desire.

    But do you see how in Emily’s comment that covetousness becomes “irrelevant” when it come to sexual arousal(even normal heterosexual desire)? In most other areas whether it would be a house, food, cars, clothing…ect arousal or desire is never considered sinful, but rather covetousness is. But here in the sexual arena they condemn desire itself.

    So if your find your neighbor’s car desirable, no problem as long as you don’t covet his car.
    If you find your neighbor’s house desirable, no problem as long as you don’t covet his car.
    If you find your neighbor’s steak desirable, no problem as long as you don’t covet his steak.
    But if you find your neighbor’s wife sexually desirable – now we have a problem even before it becomes covetous.

    So let’s review Emily’s original statement.
    “If you look at your neighbors wife, and want to have sex with her (lusting) that is a desire to commit a sin.”
    If a man wants to have sex with his neighbor’s wife I agree that is sin! If he actually desires to possess her that is absolutely wicked and sinful. Amen!

    But if he finds her sexually desirable or is aroused by her beauty or imagines what she looks like naked or what it would be like to have sex with her there is ZERO sin in that. He must desire to want her, or in other words have a desire to possess her. Finding her desirable is NOT a sin anymore than him finding the steaks on his neighbor’s grill desirable is a sin.

    Your statement:
    “But if it’s directed towards a woman you don’t know… You are not only being tempted by something that is earthly you are also reducing the woman into an object of earthly desire. Sex does not exist without love, so why would I imagine having sex with a man I do not know? Instead, if I have these desires, I should try to get to know his soul.”

    My Response:
    I can’t tell you how many times I have heard variations of this statement you just made over the years, and 90% of the time it is made by women. The reason is because God has designed women to see sex primarily from the emotional and relational aspect and the visual and physical of aspect of sexuality is always secondary. Where as God has designed men completely the opposite. Men see sex first and foremost from the visual and physical aspect and then on a secondary level from the emotional and relational aspect. Now today many men try and pretend to see sex the way women do so they can fit in with the ladies and look more “enlightened and evolved” but this is simply a denial of how God made them as men.

    I agree that “Sex does not exist without love” in the sense that sexual relations between a man and woman are not to exist outside the agape love(a love of the will, commitment and duty) that is pledged in the covenant of marriage. However our sexual desires come before the act of sex itself and those exist long before marriage and often before a relationship or love exists between a man and a woman – and there is nothing sinful about this.

    The Bible uses “earthly” in two senses, one is of something being temporary and the other is of being part of our sin nature(which corrupted the natures that God gave man and woman in the garden of Eden).

    So yes it is “earthly” that a man finds a woman he does not know sexually desirable, or a woman find a man she does not know sexually desirable in the sense that our human sexuality is temporary(for this world only). But it is NOT “earthly” in the sense of this finding the opposite sex sexually desirable is part of our corrupted sin nature.

    An if we are looking at “earthly” desires in the sense of desiring things that are temporary these would also apply:

    When a single woman goes to a wedding and desires to get married herself one day(not knowing who the lucky man will be) that is an “earthly” desire. Marriage is temporary for this world only.

    When a married woman with no children of her own sees a mother walk by holding her new born child and she feels that desire swell up in her to have a child of her own one day – that is an “earthly” desire in the sense that having children is temporary and for this world only.

    I could go on but you get the point. There are a lot of things that we desire that are temporary and for this world only, but it is not wrong to desire them. God has designed us to desire these things in this temporary world, he just does not want us to hang on to them to tightly or think we can take them into the next world. We should not be over powered by our desire for these things, desires that he placed in man and woman when he created them in the Garden of Eden, before the corruption of the fall.

12. Alex,

    You hit on an excellent point and I have seen this same issue with men as you.

    “I’ve noticed that in addition to creating self-loathing in men, this attitude also promotes a hatred of the women to whom they’re attracted. They blame the woman for being beautiful and tempting them and often find something amiss with her clothing or her makeup or her jewelry so that they can put their guilt on her. It often doesn’t matter how covered up she is or how loose-fitting her clothing is.”

    The reason they are angry at these women is because they are frustrated by their own sexual arousal. They have had it beat into their heads by parents or churches that those feelings of arousal or enjoyment they experience by seeing the female form(even if completely covered) is sin. So they walk around in guilt and shame all the time and it makes them angry at women.

    Really if they are honest they would admit they are angry at God making them as they are. Now some of our Churches and other Christians would tell them God did not make them that way. They teach by God’s original design that this frustrated young men would never have felt the pleasure he does from the female form of any woman until he took her as his wife. Then magically on the wedding night he would have sexual desire for her, because that then it is ok. Do they realize how ludicrous this sounds?(most don’t think it through that far).

    But the truth is, and I teach this to my teenage sons as well as every other man I come across in person or online:

    While sexual relations between a man and a woman are strictly reserved for the covenant of marriage, our sexuality itself is NOT. God did not intend for young single men, or even married men to have to suppress their natural male sexuality. It was not meant only for procreation in marriage(although that is one of many reasons for it), but it was meant for our joy and our pleasure. No man needs to be ashamed of his sexuality, especially his visual arousal. The sin comes in when we misuse the gift of our sexuality.

    In a world where Christians understand that our sexuality is not what we guard against, but instead we guard against covetousness men would not be so loathsome for how women dress. Obviously there is a place and time for dressing in certain ways. That is what the Bible admonition to modesty is, it is to dress appropriately to the occasion. It would be highly inappropriate for a woman to come to church in a bikini because the Bible says she must have “kata stola” or be fully clothed for worship. But that does not mean when a woman goes to the beach she has to be wearing her church clothes, instead she can wear a bikini. It is all about wearing clothing for the appropriate occasion.

    I remember growing up in Church and still to this day they teach women should not dress in ways which cause men to lust. What passage of Scripture says that? The answer is none.

    A woman does not cause a man to lust by her clothing(or lack their of). He may allow himself to lust, but she is not responsible for his lust without some active incitement on her part. A woman who is fully clothed from head to toe can entice and seduce a man into coveting her(lusting after her) while a woman wearing bikini at the beach can act in appropriate ways that does not intice men into lusting after her.

13. Alex,

    “On the one hand, I’m not entirely convinced of the wisdom of comparing women to literal pieces of meat in the article, as it does make it seem as though you’re viewing them purely as sexual objects rather than as attractive people whose looks you happen to admire, which I don’t think was your intent.”

    I wanted to address this comment separately and I agree it raises an interesting issue. I believe that as human beings we are designed to view the opposite sex as both objects of beauty and sexual pleasure AND as persons. It is not an either or situation – it is both.

    Let me demonstrate what I mean. If a young man is at some event with a bunch of other young people and he notices a beautiful young girl across the room whom he knows nothing about – his mind whether he realizes it or not is seeing her as an object of beauty and potential sexual pleasure. Now he might go over and talk to her and figure out she has a horrible personality or it just would not work for some other reasons and he moves on. Or maybe he goes and talks to her and finds all these things they have in common, so he comes to be attracted to her person, in addition to her body as an object of sexual beauty and pleasure.

    But especially as men we are designed to by God to be attracted to by both the physical(the body which is an object) as well as the person(soul). Now in some rare cases attraction works in reverse. A man may find himself friends with a woman he works with and initially he has no physical attraction to her whatsoever, but then he is so attracted to her person that eventually even her body which was unattractive to him becomes attractive(this is subjective attraction).

    Now where objectification can go into sin is where some men see women only as objects of sexual pleasure and not also as persons. These are usually the men that won’t marry and sleep around with women till they become attached and want a relationship and then they move on to the next girl. It is a key characteristic of sexual offenders(rapists and molesters) where they only see people as objects of sexual pleasure and not as persons as well.

14. I agree that men can and do act in appropriate ways just as women do. Men flirt when they should not, and women flirt when they should not. Men get jealous when they should not, and women get jealous when they should not. I believe there is a very dark and clear line between flirting and other inappropriate contact between a married person and some other and simply finding someone sexually attractive.

    If a husband or wife is jealous because because another person is flirting with or inappropriately talking to or touching their spouse they have every right to be jealous in the context of a monogamous marriage. However neither a husband nor a wife has the right to be jealous of their spouse finding another person sexually desirable. You don’t have the right to upset about your spouses thoughts or feelings, but only their actions.

    Alex and I must know some very different men. Most of my Christian friends if you got them talking candidly and asked them if their wife admitted she was fantasizing that he looked like Chris Hemsworth while she was giving him the night of his life he would not care in the least bit. Now I have met some men that would respond just as Alex has stated, but it is because of one of two reasons. Either they are very insecure men or they have been raised and programmed to be jealous of this kind of scenario. I believe it comes from a place of insecurity and low self esteem in most cases.

    Now if you have a spouse(whether husband or wife) that you know is highly insecure should you share with them your thoughts and fantasies? Absolutely not! Sometimes you have to share things with your spouse that will cause them some temporary pain, but in the end it will be beneficial for the relationship but this is certainly not one of those cases. There is not one passage of Scripture that says a person must share every thought they have with their spouse.

15. I see what you’re saying when you put in context of the body/soul dichotomy. Thanks for addressing that.

16. Hmm, just thinking Biblical, about women and steaks. One reason this tends to concern women so much is that we are somewhat dependent on men perceiving us as whole people worthy of their protection and provision. So when men perceive us instead as steaks for consumption, it implies we shall be used up and tossed away. That runs so counter to biology because we really need men in order for us to create families, even just to survive in many parts of the world.

    So while you are talking about porn in a some what innocent way, as if it doesn’t really mean much to men, just kind of a flat two dimensional representation of something erotic, what I see is men starting to perceive real live women that way. There’s enough history within our culture to show that that is not an unjustified concern. When women are not perceived as having much worth and value, when men can disconnect their sexual feelings from us, we don’t fare so well.

    All the rest of it however, embracing healthy sexuality, eliminating some of our shame based teachings, amen!

17. “Hmm, just thinking Biblical, about women and steaks. One reason this tends to concern women so much is that we are somewhat dependent on men perceiving us as whole people worthy of their protection and provision. So when men perceive us instead as steaks for consumption, it implies we shall be used up and tossed away.”

    Yes, this is the issue with how a comparison like that comes across. It’s true that men and women on some level end up viewing each other as sexual objects in that we find each other pleasing to look at and end up wanting to take pleasure in sex with each other, but it’s also true that we always need to be mindful that we’re all human beings with souls and that we need to respect one another. Unfortunately, some people, particularly men with regards to women, fail to see those to whom they are attracted as more than objects. Because of this and because a lot of us have had experiences like the ones that Rosie describes, it automatically concerns us when we hear a man compare us to an object, even if he is also emphasizing our humanity and our soul later on in his speech or his blog post. I understand more what BGR means now that he’s elaborated on the notion that the body is merely an object that contains the soul and the mind, which animates the body and provides it with humanity, but it’s a perplexing phrasing to start with.

    “So while you are talking about porn in a some what innocent way, as if it doesn’t really mean much to men, just kind of a flat two dimensional representation of something erotic, what I see is men starting to perceive real live women that way.”

    Another issue with professional porn that ends up creeping into amateur porn at times due to competition: a lot of it presents a very violent version of sex, and encourages it’s performers, particularly female performers, to engage in increasingly risky sex acts in the interest of getting noticed and getting better jobs. Not only does this hurt the performers (physically sometimes), but it normalizes a very violent and risky version of sex for inexperienced young men and teenage boys, which they sometimes bring into their sexual experiences with living women. (An article that elaborates not he issue http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/boner-garage-posts-a-window-into-the-world-of-sexualised-young-women-online/story-fnet0gt3-1227378480882.) This issue can even crop up with less problematic porn if viewers are using it as a guide for how they should actually have sex. I’ll try not to get TMI, but because porn is a visual medium, the actors are often posed in ways that best show off their bodies. Unfortunately, these poses are often very uncomfortable for the male performers while they’re penetrating and outright painful for the female performers due to the angle at which they’re being penetrated.

18. Alex, you asked about my boyfriend. No, I’d say he’s more of a spiritual rather than a religious person. He believes in God, but he disagrees with me about masturbation, porn and fornication. My priest is trying to teach him about God, but so far I think he’s just agreeing to my rules because he loves me.
    It’ll all be okay once we’re married… Just need to get there first.. without sin.

    As for how women dress. I agree that modesty standards basically will always change. In a beach, a bikini is immodest, whereas in Church, a short skirt is immodest. There isn’t really a set rule for modesty so I just dress for comfort. In Texas it’s hot af, so I’ll wear short shorts. In Seattle it colder, so I’ll wear something warmer. In gym I’ll wear my yoga pants cause they are comfortable. The only rule I live by is that I try not to wear something purposefully provocative, and I dont think Christian ladies should do that

19. Larry,
    I’m actually more openminded on this subject now so you may have convinced me. Not for myself, but for my boyfriend. I think that if something even MIGHT be a sin, I’d rather not do it. But for my bf, he’s really struggling, and I think he’s angry at me for making him practice total abstinence. He also says that his athletic performance is decreasing and I’m not sure if thats actually true. But based on what you said I may allow him to lust and masturbate if it helps him..

    But first… that is not how it is phrased in my Bible, fyi. I just looked it up. It compares coveting to coveting, not to lust. Lust is not mentioned in that passage at all!

    In that case, there is not much else in the Bible that equates the two. So I mean, thanks for clarifying what you mean by covet but I still think lust in and of itself is a sin.

    As to lusting being a sinful desire.. you first brought up your steak analogy and then said “However when it comes to normal heterosexual sex between a man and a woman this is a God given desire, a good and righteous desire as opposed to a fleshly and wicked desire.”
    But thats just not true.. Heterosexual sex is ALSO a sin, perhaps to a lesser degree than homosexuality but a sin nonetheless, UNLESS it is within marriage. So yes, desiring a steak is not a sin, and desiring sex with your wife or someone you want to be your wife is not a sin, but desiring sex with a woman you aren’t married to, don’t plan on getting married to, and don’t even know that well is absolutely a sin.

    “If a man wants to have sex with his neighbor’s wife I agree that is sin! If he actually desires to possess her that is absolutely wicked and sinful. Amen!
    But if he finds her sexually desirable or is aroused by her beauty or imagines what she looks like naked or what it would be like to have sex with her there is ZERO sin in that.”

    Whats the difference between ‘desire’ and ‘want?’ And for the record, yes, admiring beauty is allowed even from a Catholic perspective. I doubt you can admire without lust though. Like, I can admire a beautiful girl, her body and facial features, without feeling lustful. But I can’t do that with an attractive man. Admiring him sooner or later would lead to lust. So I admire and then turn away. Constant glances when I am feeling lustful will only feed the sin.

    “The reason is because God has designed women to see sex primarily from the emotional and relational aspect and the visual and physical of aspect of sexuality is always secondary.”
    I have reflected on this before, that the Bible seems to favor women – in terms of sex anyway. By making it something for procreation and unity of souls, Jesus and St. Paul definitely play down the earthly aspect of it, or flat out warn against it. I do agree that there are some earthly desires that are good and natural and are not a result of sin. And indeed, sex between married couples is temporary, earthly, but beautiful. But as I said before in this post, I don’t agree that the desire for heterosexual sex outside marriage is a natural, good desire. And perhaps it’s harder for men to adopt this view of sex, but I really believe that’s what God intended. I’m probably biased here, this is one of the things I love about my religion.

    Last thing:
    “Marriage is temporary for this world only.”
    Marriage is a joining of souls. souls are immortal.

20. Insanity,

    I understand the concerns that comparing women to steaks can raise in women. However I purposefully chose a comparison of women to food because I believe it is accurate from a biological standpoint(and you reference biology as well). There are multiple brain studies that have been done that prove that the same part of the brain that causes us to get pleasure from the sights, smells and taste of food is the same area that causes us to get pleasure from the sights and smells of the opposite sex as well as the act of sex itself.

    For men this part of the brain is far more active than it is with women. So I would argue that runs counter to male biology and psychology to expect him not to take pleasure from the sight of beautiful women around him.

    “Telling men not to become aroused by signs of beauty, youth and health is like telling them not to experience sugar as sweet.”

    David M. Buss, PhD pg 71, “The Evolution of Desire”

    I completely agree that women from a biological and psychological standpoint need security, they need to know that they will not be used and then tossed away when the someone prettier comes along. This is the exact situation that is accounted for in the law of Moses in Exodus 21:10-11 when God commands that if a man takes a second wife he cannot neglect or throw away his first wife. He still has to provide for her, protect her and give her sex. He still had to respect the inheritance rights of her children.

    But I think that men and women really need to respect the differences in each other’s natures. Women need to be cognizant of their tendencies of jealousy toward their husband in regard to him looking at other women. Men need be cognizant of the feelings of women around them, whether it is their wives or girlfriends or the women they are looking at. This is why I constantly say throughout my blog that men taking tasteful glances at women are ok, but men should not gawk as this upsets both the women they are with as well as the women they are looking at.

    But I think women need to truly understand that for men there is a much sharper dichotomy between the body and person(soul) than there is for the typical woman. Women are built by nature to blend things to together, to look at things as a whole, where as men separate things into parts. Again this is by the design of God and should be respected.

    So for the typical woman, she looks and blends and blurs a man’s body and his person together and there is not a clear distinction between the two. Men see a very clear distinction between a woman’s body and her person, and this is a VERY difficult thing for most women to understand. In fact even in looking at a woman’s body, men see a woman’s body as a collection of parts where as most women would see a man’s body from a whole perspective. When we as men see a woman, we automatically size up how large and proportional her breasts are and what her hip to waist ratio is. We notice how proportional her rear is to the rest of her body. We notice how proportional her face is with her eyes nose and mouth. We notice her legs and how well formed they are.

    Many women when they hear this about men get offended. In fact many women(whether it is mothers, sisters, girlfriends and wives) will shame men for having such tendencies and will call it “sinful, shallow and base”. Even non-Christian feminist women attack men for “objectifying women”. But what they do not realize is – they are shaming God’s design in man, and no man should be ashamed of the way he has been created. This is not part of man’s fallen nature, but rather his original design in the Garden of Eden.

    This is why it is important that a woman not only respect how her husbands visual sexuality works, but she does her very best to be pleasing to him in a visual way. A woman has an obligation to present herself as beautiful as possible for her husband. Now I am not talking about women getting plastic surgery. I am also not talking about a 40 year old woman having to make herself look like a 20 year old woman either. Having children takes a natural toll on a woman’s body and men should be reasonable about these things – and most men are.

    Wives also need to realize that it is very possible for their husbands to love their person, but not find their bodies attractive anymore because of neglect(rather than the natural aging process). Women don’t want to hear that, but it is true. Beauty does have a weight limit(which is different of course for every woman based on her height and build). But at a certain point when a woman completely looses her shape and the curves are gone because of weight this can and does have a direct impact on her attractiveness.

    Again remember that men see a very clear distinction between a woman’s person and their body(and this remains true for their wives as well). But that does not mean a man might not find his wife subjectively beautiful as opposed to objectively beautiful. The 70 year old man may still find his 68 year old wife beautiful simply because of the decades he has spent with her and the love in his heart he has for her. But this is subjective beauty, beauty that based on feelings and experience, not a beauty that is based on actual physical characteristics.

    But what about men having unrealistic expectations of how women should look? This is a very real and valid concern that women often have. Some men make their wives feel terrible for gaining the slightest amount of weight(which is normal with having children and also as part of the natural aging process) and we can all agree that is wrong. It is also wrong for a man to expect his wife to have to look like models in magazines, television, movies or even other women in person.

    Lastly – on the issue of a woman’s worth in relation to her body. A person’s worth as a human being should never be dependent on their body or physical appearance. However a person’s body does affect their worth in various other ways. For instance if you are going to be a bouncer at a club they are generally looking for a larger and more muscular person for that job. So your worth as a bouncer is dependent on your body to certain extent. When a woman goes to apply for a modeling, acting, or dancing job often times her body is larger consideration of her worth as a dancer, actor or model. It is no different for woman in her position as potential wife.

    Her body is a large part of the consideration of worth as a potential wife. Even the Scriptures show this to be true:
    “We have a little sister, and her breasts are not yet grown. What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for?” – Song of Solomon 8:8 (NIV)

    “Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful. Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.” – Genesis 29:16-18 (NIV)

    The Bible is clear here that Rachel’s beauty over her sister was a large part of Jacob preferring her over Leah. Now after Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah first he still had and obligation to love her and care for her needs even though he had no physical attraction to her and God made Rachel barren because of the neglect that Jacob had showed toward Leah. But men are never condemned in Scripture for seeking out beauty in women, it is part of our design.

    Again should a woman’s body be the ONLY consideration of her worth as a potential wife? Of course not. A woman can be beautiful on the outside and very ugly on the inside and men need to watch for this. But there is nothing wrong with a man considering a woman’s body as larger factor in considering a woman’s worth as a potential wife.

    There was probably a shorter way to say all this, but I hope this makes my points.

21. “So for the typical woman, she looks and blends and blurs a man’s body and his person together and there is not a clear distinction between the two. Men see a very clear distinction between a woman’s body and her person, and this is a VERY difficult thing for most women to understand. In fact even in looking at a woman’s body, men see a woman’s body as a collection of parts where as most women would see a man’s body from a whole perspective. When we as men see a woman, we automatically size up how large and proportional her breasts are and what her hip to waist ratio is. We notice how proportional her rear is to the rest of her body. We notice how proportional her face is with her eyes nose and mouth. We notice her legs and how well formed they are.

    Many women when they hear this about men get offended. In fact many women(whether it is mothers, sisters, girlfriends and wives) will shame men for having such tendencies and will call it “sinful, shallow and base”. Even non-Christian feminist women attack men for “objectifying women”. But what they do not realize is – they are shaming God’s design in man, and no man should be ashamed of the way he has been created. This is not part of man’s fallen nature, but rather his original design in the Garden of Eden.”

    This isn’t actually a neurological difference between the sexes. What you say is technically true according to studies–men do tend to view women as collections of body parts while women tend to view men as whole beings–but you forget to include how women view other women and how men view other men, which somewhat obscures the picture. Women also view women as a collection of parts, and men also view other men as whole beings. This has far less to do with how male sexuality and female sexuality work and far more to do with how we (whether we’re male or female) view men and women.

    http://www.livescience.com/21806-brain-male-female-objectification.html

22. Forgot to include my point. My point was that what you’re describing–viewing women as a collection of parts rather than as a whole body–doesn’t seem to be something that’s programmed into their male nature because women do that to women too. It also doesn’t seem to have much to do with sexuality or with how much men like looking at beautiful women–again, heterosexual women do that to do women too. It seems to be more a product of social conditioning and media advertising. Also, the fact that a woman would view a man as a whole body rather than as a collection of parts hardly means that she’s less pleased by his looks or derives less enjoyment in looking at him than she would if she instead saw him a collection of parts.

    “I understand the concerns that comparing women to steaks can raise in women. However I purposefully chose a comparison of women to food because I believe it is accurate from a biological standpoint(and you reference biology as well). There are multiple brain studies that have been done that prove that the same part of the brain that causes us to get pleasure from the sights, smells and taste of food is the same area that causes us to get pleasure from the sights and smells of the opposite sex as well as the act of sex itself.”

    I’d also have to argue that it was still a very poor choice of analogy, and this latest explanation actually made me less sympathetic to it. Just because men enjoy the sight of a beautiful woman and have his sense of sight pleased in the same way that he would have his sense of taste pleased if he hate a steak doesn’t mean that a woman is like a steak. You might appreciate the object that is her body, but she still has that mind and soul that animates that body and makes that body into more than a steak or another inanimate object. You can’t let yourself ignore those. This is not at all to say that enjoying the sight of someone good-looking is wrong. This is not to say that becoming aroused by a good-looking person is wrong. This is saying that allowing yourself to forget that they are a person because they’re attractive is wrong and that saying, “Oh well, that’s just in my nature,” is just excusing poor behavior. You can admire a beautiful woman without dehumanizing her.

23. Emily,

    You did it again -you inspired an article dedicated to an issue you have raised on the issue of Romans 7:7.

    https://biblicalgenderroles.com/2015/10/14/why-does-the-kjv-render-romans-77-as-lust-and-covet/

    As to your other statement:
    “Last thing:
    “Marriage is temporary for this world only.”
    Marriage is a joining of souls. souls are immortal.”

    Nothing in Scripture says that marriage is joining of two souls, rather it is the joining to two bodies thus the term “one flesh” in reference to marriage, not “one spirit” or “one soul”.

    “5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
    6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” – Matthew 19:5-6 (KJV)

    This special “one flesh” relationship, the joining of two bodies in act of sex is reserved only for marriage and that is why the Apostle Paul warn’s again men becoming “one flesh” with prostitutes:

    “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.” – I Corinthians 6:15-16 (KJV)

    The Bible makes it clear that marriage is only temporary and only for as long as both the husband and wife live, if either of them die the marriage is no more, or when they go to heaven the marriage is no more.

    “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” – Matthew 22:30 (KJV)

    “The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.” – I Corinthians 7:39 (KJV)

    So Biblically speaking, marriage is a “one flesh”, temporary and earthly relationship. It is not a joining of two immortal souls(as romantic as that sounds).

24. Alex,

    This actually a huge discussion on the differences between the way the male brain functions from the female brain.

    A great book by a Christian doctor on this subject is “His Brain her Brain”

    “the average man’s brain is sexually stimulated by visual cues and is built for variety…

    Using functional MRI scans, researchers examined the brains of young men as they looked at pictures of beautiful women. They found that feminine beauty affects a man’s brain at a very primal level – similar to what a hungry person gets from a good meal or addict gets from a fix. One of the researchers said, “This is hard core circuitry. This is not a conditioned response.” Another concluded, “Men apparently cannot do anything about their pleasurable feelings [in the presence of beauty]”

    Dr. Walt Larimore, MD – pg. 99 “His Brain, Her Brain”

    http://www.amazon.com/His-Brain-Her-Differences-Strengthen/dp/031024028X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396807524&sr=1-1&keywords=his+brain+her+brain

    There are actually several other great books on this subject, even by non-Christians that show difference between the male and female brains.

    The differences between the male and female brains is not easily seen because from a physical view point if you put a male and female brain on a table and dissected them you would see no obvious differences. The differences come in the chemical make up as well as the pathways between hemispheres. Men have more grey matter and women have more white matter in their brain. Men have more connections to their spine from their brain then women do. Science is finally allowing us to see actual differences in how men perceive things and how women perceive things and God is just sitting back saying “I told you so”.

25. I didn’t see your first response, but it has very little to do with my point. First of all, I wasn’t saying that there were no neurological differences between men and women. Second of all, I wasn’t saying that men weren’t visual or that they were unaffected by good-looking woman. (Although you didn’t post anything about what that study said about how women react to good-looking men, so you’ve given me no basis for comparison. Men like female beauty–so what if you don’t tell me how women feel about male beauty?) What I said was that the fact that men tend to view women as a collection of body parts and that women tend to view men as whole bodies doesn’t give the full picture and doesn’t actually suggest a gender difference because women view other women the same way that men view women and men view other men the same way that women view men.

26. Alex,

    Are you referring to another link? I read the link you put but I did not see where it talked about how women react to good looking men. Can you post the quote you are referring to? I did see what you said that is simply a verification of what every man knows about himself – we see women as collection of body parts and I am sure you can confirm that you see men more as a whole than as a collection of different parts.

    I would never deny that women don’t have physical attraction to men, but I believe the mechanisms are different based on the books I have read as well as real life experience talking to men and women.

    But if you have another quote about how women react to attractive men let me know.

27. Okay. You seem to be very confused about what I’m trying to say. The link is saying that WOMEN also view WOMEN as a collection of parts. The link is also saying that MEN too view MEN as whole bodies. To put it in other terms, WOMEN AND MEN view WOMEN in the same way (i.e. as a collection of parts). MEN AND WOMEN view MEN in the same way (i.e. as whole bodies). This is the relevant portion:

    “The results showed a clear schism between the images of men and women. When viewing female images, participants were better at recognizing individual parts than they were matching whole-body photographs to the originals. The opposite was true for male images: People were better at recognizing a guy as a whole than they were his individual parts.

    People were also better at discerning women’s individual body parts than they were at men’s individual body parts, further confirming the local processing, or objectification, that was happening.

    ‘It’s both men and women doing this to women,’ Gervais said. ‘So don’t blame the men here.'”

28. Also, what exactly does the book say about how women view and react to male beauty? Do you have a specific quote?

29. “Alex and I must know some very different men. Most of my Christian friends if you got them talking candidly and asked them if their wife admitted she was fantasizing that he looked like Chris Hemsworth while she was giving him the night of his life he would not care in the least bit. Now I have met some men that would respond just as Alex has stated, but it is because of one of two reasons. Either they are very insecure men or they have been raised and programmed to be jealous of this kind of scenario. I believe it comes from a place of insecurity and low self esteem in most cases.”

    Well, my man is probably a very different man than you are. He’s never explicitly stated his feelings on the subject about thinking about someone else during sex, but given that he cares very much about having my full attention whenever we’re interacting in any way, sexual or non-sexual, I’d say that it would bother him. But I don’t do that to him anyway because I agree that it’s important to focus on whatever task I’m doing or on whomever I’m interacting with, especially him, although I do sometimes have to fight to keep my mind from wandering with most things and most people. So, for him, I wouldn’t say that that comes from a place of insecurity or low self-esteem. He just doesn’t like it when I multitask with anything, so why should sex be different?

    “Now if you have a spouse(whether husband or wife) that you know is highly insecure should you share with them your thoughts and fantasies? Absolutely not! Sometimes you have to share things with your spouse that will cause them some temporary pain, but in the end it will be beneficial for the relationship but this is certainly not one of those cases. There is not one passage of Scripture that says a person must share every thought they have with their spouse.”

    That’s also a fair point. He doesn’t share with me if he ever thinks about other women as being attractive, although I’ve told him that I wouldn’t mind if he did find another woman attractive because I trust him and I know that it’s natural to admire good looks. A few times, he’s said that he really doesn’t because he doesn’t have the same emotional connection with other women so their looks don’t have the same impact on him as mine do. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I think that it’s wise to not press the issue. In return, though, I don’t tell him if I ever think that another man is attractive because he doesn’t tell me if he thinks other women are attractive. I think that this partly out of loyalty and respect for me, so I want to return that favor. Besides that, because I want to as loyal as possible, I don’t fantasize about other men whom I find attractive. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to do so or that others should do what we do, but we both feel a very strong obligation to be loyal to one another. It’s a personal choice, I suppose.

30. I think there is a fine line on this and some men will use it to try and fill their wants. Men will look at women and find them physically attractive, and immediately have in their mind whether they find them sexually attractive; which is basically a thought of sex with that woman. The part that makes it a fine line is when the man constantly thinks about it, and obsesses over the thought of sex with the woman, the farther down the path to coveting the woman which is what BGR is pointing out. There are plenty of people I work with that are attractive, and I’ve told my wife about them, but I don’t dwell on the thoughts and let sexual thoughts of them come in my mind, thoughts like that are left for my wife. Initial thoughts just happen in men, there is no way around it, that is how we are made, but to let it take hold, that is when it could turn to coveting.

    The part about jealousy after watching a movie with sex scenes or an attractive actor/actress reveals where the person’s heart is if whether they’re coveting or not. If seeing the actor/actress or sex scene gets them to be sexually aroused when watching them, and later they have sex with their spouse, it is not that they are truly wanting that person in the sex scene, it could be in the terms of the sex scene, the passion that is emitted from the scene. Now if in watching the movie, it gets them imagining the actress/actor, and then shutting down their spouse for sex, is where I see the problem because that is when the coveting comes into play. That shows that they’re coveting the actress and rejecting their spouse sexually.

31. BGR, my hubby commented, but I think he’s stuck in moderation. His name is Sheepdog2013 😀 ❤

    Anyway… Alex… you are very off base in this discussion of male neuroscience.
    "You might appreciate the object that is her body, but she still has that mind and soul that animates that body and makes that body into more than a steak or another inanimate object. You can’t let yourself ignore those. This is not at all to say that enjoying the sight of someone good-looking is wrong. This is not to say that becoming aroused by a good-looking person is wrong. This is saying that allowing yourself to forget that they are a person because they’re attractive is wrong and that saying, “Oh well, that’s just in my nature,” is just excusing poor behavior. You can admire a beautiful woman without dehumanizing her."

    You're confusing morality with basic biology. There is a study (I'll find it tomorrow, I have strep throat today go figure), that shows that men's brains, when viewing a woman (clothed even), show in MRI scans that the parts of the brain that light up are the same ones for tool usage. Meaning in very basic terms, that sex is mechanic and "using" or "objectifying" a woman's body to be used… like a tool. This is just science and also the way God designed men's brains. You can't say that it is morally wrong, it is amoral and simply biology.

    You're trying to say that this is "dehumanizing" the woman. That sex always must be about sex paired with love for that woman. That is completely incorrect. Men, even biblically, have always been able to separate sex and love. Judah, when he used Tamar when she was playing the role of a prostitute along his path, was not at all in love with this prostitute (secretly Tamar), he used her body like a tool for sexual release. Of course, fornication and prostitution are sins, but God used this to accomplish good for Tamar, giving her twin boys from Judah.

    Anyway, men are designed to objectify women's bodies. It is not from social media, airbrushing, or whatnot, it is simply the way your brains are created.

32. Alex,

    This book does not talk about the female reaction to male beauty. But I have checked this and several other brain books and well as relationship books and they all share a similar conclusion of the stark differences between male and female arousal mechanism(visual does not seem to be on the list for women):

    ““Given that men have a larger hypothalamus than women and fifteen to twenty times more circulating testosterone to stimulate their desire for sex, it is no wonder that the male sex drive is so powerful. Women have a lower testosterone level and a small hypothalamus, so their sex drive is usually not as strong.
    These fundamental biological differences are just the beginning of many, many ways his brain and her brain function differently when it comes to sex:
    Men tend to be oriented physically; women tend to be oriented emotionally and relationally.
    Men are stimulated by images and sight. Women are stimulated by feelings, smell, touch, words.
    Men can initiate sex anytime and anywhere; women initiate sex less frequently.
    Men are quick to respond sexually and difficult to distract during sex; women are slower to respond and easy to distract.
    Men need orgasm for sexual satisfaction; women do not.
    A man’s orgasm is short, intense, physically oriented, solitary; a woman’s orgasm is slower, more intense, emotionally oriented, and (at least potentially) multiple.
    …
    For a man, add a visual image or thought to his ever-ready testosterone, and he’s “ready to go.” From the onset of sex to orgasm, the average man takes two and half minutes. For a woman, the average is thirteen minutes.
    A woman’s sex drive results from a large number of emotional factors, including – but not limited to – closeness, trust, a safe location, the proper touch, a pleasant scent, and the right words, all of which lead to the release of her sex hormones.”

    Dr. Walt Larimore, MD – pg. 90 “His Brain, Her Brain”
    http://www.amazon.com/His-Brain-Her-Differences-Strengthen/dp/031024028X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396807524&sr=1-1&keywords=his+brain+her+brain

    Again this is not say that women don’t like to see attractive men, but for most women it does not appear to a primary factor in her sexual arousal as it is THE primary factor for most men.

    “The human sexual response cycle, sexual desire, activities, satisfaction, and physical and mental responses in men and women are different. Men usually feel sexual satisfaction during sexual activity and are more prone to physical attraction, whereas women are more affected by the environment and emotions related to the sexual partner or sexual fantasy in terms of sexual satisfaction. Men generally respond to visual sexual stimuli, such as attractive nude or erotic pictures, or erotic films. Women respond differently to the same sexual stimuli. Some women feel repulsed by muscular, erotic male photos, and some are sexually attracted by emotional or lingual stimulation. In other words, men are more sexually aroused by visual stimuli, but women are more sexually aroused by concrete, auditory, olfactory, touch and emotionally relevant sexual stimulation. For example, adolescent boys frequently feel strong genital responses to visual sexual stimuli, which are usually accompanied by a craving for sexual expression or masturbation. In contrast, adolescent girls’ sexual feelings often arise from emotional reactions to their partner, or romantic themes in films, novels and magazines. Some experimental studies have shown that men respond more to sexual stimuli than women do.”

    http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/808430

    So yes Women may appreciate male beauty, I have no doubt that you do. But there is no scientific evidence that suggest that the average woman responds to male form in the anywhere near the same way that a man responds to the female form.

33. Well, I guess that I haven’t been conveying my points clearly. Sorry about that.

    “You’re confusing morality with basic biology. There is a study (I’ll find it tomorrow, I have strep throat today go figure), that shows that men’s brains, when viewing a woman (clothed even), show in MRI scans that the parts of the brain that light up are the same ones for tool usage.”

    I’ve heard about that study before too, although I believe that the “clothed” woman was just wearing a bikini.

    “Meaning in very basic terms, that sex is mechanic and ‘using’ or ‘objectifying’ a woman’s body to be used… like a tool. This is just science and also the way God designed men’s brains. You can’t say that it is morally wrong, it is amoral and simply biology.”

    Okay, this is what I didn’t make clear. I’m not saying that that the biology of it is morally wrong. Like you said, it’s amoral because it’s just programming. However, we also have morality and that can mix with the biology. For example, a man on a biological level might view sex in that way and respond to the sight of a woman in that way. But because he has morality as well and because he has an emotional side, he can at the same time remember and remind himself that she’s human.

    My main issue with the “steak” comparison was as follows. Yes, I get that good-looking people can stimulate our sense of sight in a pleasant and pleasing way just as a tasty steak can please our senses of taste and smell. However, because of our rational and moral side, we recognize that that a good-looking person isn’t just a consumable object like a steak. So, basically, while a man might respond to a woman’s looks in a similar way that he does to the steak, although I hope that he’s not sexually aroused by the steak (that’s a joke), he knows that she’s not one.

    But actually, BGR put it better: “I believe that as human beings we are designed to view the opposite sex as both objects of beauty and sexual pleasure AND as persons. It is not an either or situation – it is both.” The “steak” comparison sort of sounds like he’s saying that men can’t view women as both objects and as people, even though that’s the exact opposite of what he wants to say.

    “You’re trying to say that this is “dehumanizing” the woman. That sex always must be about sex paired with love for that woman. That is completely incorrect. ”

    Not, actually, I’m not trying to say that at all. Emily was the one who said that.

    “Men, even biblically, have always been able to separate sex and love. Judah, when he used Tamar when she was playing the role of a prostitute along his path, was not at all in love with this prostitute (secretly Tamar), he used her body like a tool for sexual release. Of course, fornication and prostitution are sins, but God used this to accomplish good for Tamar, giving her twin boys from Judah.”

    And do you think that Tamar was going after Judah in that way out of love, or do you think that it was because she wanted restitution because he had denied her the opportunity to have sons?

    “Anyway, men are designed to objectify women’s bodies. It is not from social media, airbrushing, or whatnot, it is simply the way your brains are created.”

    I think that my point got lost here too. I was responding specifically to BGR’s point that men tend to view women as a collection of body parts while women tend to view men as whole bodies. His contention was that this demonstrated a difference between male and female sexuality as well as a neurological difference. I said that if we looked at how women view other women and how men view other men, it painted a different picture. Why?

    Because as it turns out, women also view other women as a collection of body parts. Also, men tend to view other men as whole bodies rather than as a collection of parts. Why is this? Does it mean that all women are secretly lesbian because they only objectify women in that way, or maybe all men are secretly gay because they can only appreciate men’s looks as a whole rather than as parts of a whole? Or does it suggest that viewing women as a collection of body parts is related to something other than sexuality? Personally, I’m guessing that it’s the latter, and the people who conducted the study suggested that too:

    “There could be evolutionary reasons that men and women process female bodies differently, Gervais said, but because both genders do it, ‘the media is probably a prime suspect.’

    ‘Women’s bodies and their body parts are used to sell all sorts of products, but we are now for everyday, ordinary women, processing them in a similar way,’ she said.”

    Hope that that clears up what my point actually is.

34. Dragonfly,

    I think a good example of how the male sex drive works demonstrated in positive way is with Issac and Rebbecca.

    ” Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel 65 and asked the servant, “Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?”

    “He is my master,” the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself.
    Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” – Genesis 24:64-67 (NIV)

    So here is the scene. Isaac just lost his mother and he is sad. His servant arrives from his journey with a wife for Isaac. She and he say nothing, he takes her into his mother’s tent and has sex with her. How romantic right? Isaac need the comfort of a woman’s body after his mother’s death, and Rebekah served the purpose. Did he get to know her as a person later? Yes. Did he eventually grow to love her? Yes. But it just demonstrates that for men – sex comes first and the relationship was built there.

    Or in other words in the sense of finding a spouse, sexual attraction comes first and then the man seeks a relationship if the attraction is there.

    Now imagine if men and women were the same. Jacob would not have been able to have sex right there on the spot, he would have needed to get to know Rebekah first and form an emotional bond with her, feel safe with her and then he could have sex with her. But that is not how God has designed us as men.

35. “So here is the scene. Isaac just lost his mother and he is sad. His servant arrives from his journey with a wife for Isaac. She and he say nothing, he takes her into his mother’s tent and has sex with her. How romantic right? Isaac need the comfort of a woman’s body after his mother’s death, and Rebekah served the purpose. Did he get to know her as a person later? Yes. Did he eventually grow to love her? Yes. But it just demonstrates that for men – sex comes first and the relationship was built there.”

    I’d argue that this isn’t the best example of what you’re trying to show. Isaac didn’t pick Rebekah himself. Abraham told his servant to go get a wife from his homeland and kind for Isaac, and the servant did just that with some guidance from God. So it’s not as though anything about her–her looks, her body, her personality, her family connections, her dowry–led Isaac to pick her because, well, he didn’t. Abraham picked the location and family from which the bride was to come. The servant actually went looking for the woman, and God arranged for Rebekah to meet the servant under the right circumstances. Now, maybe Isaac was attracted to Rebekah. Maybe he wasn’t. (And yeah, she was supposed to be lovely, so he probably was.) But it didn’t particularly matter if he was sexually attracted to her or if he knew her well. She was the wife that he’d been given in a marriage arranged by his father with the guidance of God, and he was supposed to marry her quickly and consummate the match immediately.

    Rebekah knew that that was her job too. Maybe she thought that Isaac was hot too. We don’t really know because the Bible doesn’t tell us how she felt. But we definitely don’t hear about her complaining that Isaac didn’t get to know her first. Based on that, one could argue that women don’t really care about having an emotional connection to have sex either.

    I’d also argue that wanting sex for comfort is a very emotionally-based thing.

    Finally, yes, I know that men can separate sex from love. Of course, the Bible also shows women separating sex from love for profit, so it doesn’t seem as though sex is always emotionally driven for them either.

36. Alex,

    Sorry for the confusion – I was just looking for something I could not find in that article. Mainly that women are aroused in exactly the same way by the male form as men are by the female form. I still don’t see that there. Again I am not saying women don’t find men attractive, but they don’t process the male form in the way men process the female form. In fact I would argue that feminists want women to view men the same as men view women, but it just ain’t so.

    As to the quote you mention – yes they showed that men and women both view women by parts, and men by the whole. But women are not aroused by the various parts of other women’s bodies. If anything the reason women view other women by parts is for comparison with themselves as women tend to be much more competitive when it comes to their bodies. Then men typically are with each other.

    But when men view women by parts it is purely from a sexual perspective. A Man sizes a woman up to find out if she is attractive(proportionally balanced) and if she matches up with his tastes his brain begins to send surges of dopamine through his system and he experiences a form of a high. It also causes an involuntary erection often times, especially in younger men. Again this same reaction occurs when a man sees and smells his favorite food, although dopamine from the sight of a beautiful women is higher.

37. Alex,

    If you mean that a man dehumanizes a woman when he gawks at her and makes her uncomfortable then I agree that is poor behavior. Or the classic construction men whistling at the pretty young woman walking down the sidewalk past their work site. Even though we as men cannot help the pleasure we receive and the rush it gives us to see the female form, we can help some of our reactions. We may not be able to help getting an erection, but we certainly can not whistle or act in ungentlemanly manners. We can stop ourselves from gawking and instead take only tasteful quick glances.

38. I don’t deny that visuals are more important to male arousal than to female arousal. I asked for the comparison because I was curious to see how they’d compared the responses and because I wanted to know if they’d compared male responses to visual stimulation to female responses to tactile or auditory stimulation. (Women liking sexy voices is a big thing.) Women care about men’s looks and will definitely admire good-looking men, but things like touch undoubtedly play a bigger role in their arousal than visuals. (Although I do think that women can learn to use visual stimulation to make the experience better for them if they put their mind to it.) The main quip that I have about the stuff that you posted is that it includes a number of physical stimuli for women, so it seems a bit simplistic to say that sexual arousal is a purely emotional thing for women. This study seems to say that women require a different kind of physical stimulation than men do.

    “Men are stimulated by images and sight. Women are stimulated by feelings, smell, touch, words.”

    So, here, it’s just saying that women also receive stimulation through the senses. It’s just that men are stimulated through sight while women are stimulated through smell, touch, and sound. Yes, it says that emotions can provide stimulation, but so can other physical, sense-based things.

    “Men can initiate sex anytime and anywhere; women initiate sex less frequently.”

    I’m not sure if this indicates that men have a higher sex drive. There are plenty of other reasons why women might initiate less frequently:

    1. She might not feel confidant enough to do it. She’s probably been socially conditioned to believe that doing so is unladylike and masculine.

    2. She might prefer to be chased rather than to chase, so instead of initiating directly, she either waits for the man or does subtle things to try to lure him into seducing her when she’s in the mood.

    3. Her husband might prefer to be the one doing most of the initiating, and she’s just respecting his wishes.

    4. Some combination of 2 and 3 or all of the above.

    “Men need orgasm for sexual satisfaction; women do not.”

    According to whom? Men who don’t have much success with giving women orgasms, or women who are with those men and learned to do without?

    “A man’s orgasm is short, intense, physically oriented, solitary; a woman’s orgasm is slower, more intense, emotionally oriented, and (at least potentially) multiple.”

    This is true, but in the context of the rest of the argument, it’s essentially saying: women’s orgasms are actually far more physically intense, tend to last longer, and can occur multiple times during sex, but sex isn’t about physical pleasure or satisfaction for women because reasons.

    “For a man, add a visual image or thought to his ever-ready testosterone, and he’s “ready to go.” From the onset of sex to orgasm, the average man takes two and half minutes. For a woman, the average is thirteen minutes.”

    I think that that’s a physical difference and not a neurological one. Really, that seems to boil down to it being easier to figure out how to stimulate men than women and that men tend to get stimulated more easily and more quickly by vaginal intercourse than women do (although that’s not to say that it can’t work well for women).

    “A woman’s sex drive results from a large number of emotional factors, including – but not limited to – closeness, trust, a safe location, the proper touch, a pleasant scent, and the right words, all of which lead to the release of her sex hormones.”

    A couple of things:

    1. The desire for a safe location seems more like a response to social conditioning or a biological self-defense mechanism, not a lack of desire. Women know that they’re more at risk while going to have sex, so of course, they’ll want to feel safe before proceeding. Of course they’ll turn down sex that they want if they think that doing so will put them in danger.

    2. The “proper touch” and “a pleasant scent” and “the right words” aren’t emotional factors. They’re physical ones: tactile, olfactory, and auditory.

    “Some women feel repulsed by muscular, erotic male photos…”

    This isn’t really a scientific study, but I’ve seen birthday cards for women that have a picture of Michelangelo’s David with a birthday cake over his crotch. The caption reads: “I got you something special.” Then you have cards with handsome, muscular guys cleaning for you, bringing you cake and candy, or just posing. The emphasis is, of course, on the guy’s looks. I wonder if this is more women being turned off by pictures of male bodybuilders.

39. Alex,

    I want to clarify a statement I made previously and you alluded to in this response to DragonFly:

    “I believe that as human beings we are designed to view the opposite sex as both objects of beauty and sexual pleasure AND as persons. It is not an either or situation – it is both.”

    While a woman can certainly see her boyfriend, fiance or husband as an object of beauty and sexual pleasure that is AFTER she is in the context of her emotional and relational connection to him. The average man can meet a woman and in an instant imagine her naked and himself having sex with her without knowing anything about her. This type of sexual objectivity is foreign to the women.

    Can women have sex with no emotional connection to a man as you have alluded to? Absolutely! Prostitutes do it every day. But find me a prostitute who is truly happy with sex that way. Having sex with men for money hold no satisfaction for these women, because women require commitment and security to truly enjoy sex with a man. A wife is capable of having sex with her husband, even with little to no emotional connection to him, but women need an emotional connection with a man to truly enjoy sex with him. Men are capable of having fabulous sex with a woman they have zero emotional connection to. What men need to enjoy sex is to feel that they are pleasing the woman physically. But for women they won’t be able to enjoy to truly enjoy the physical side of sex unless they allow themselves to emotionally enjoy the sex.

    Alex – I feel like you are going out of your way to try and show that men and women are not really that different when it comes to sex, when biology, scientific studies and just looking at the people around us tells us a very different story.

40. Thank you Bibilical, for your lengthy response. I tend to agree with all the points you’ve made. I do not believe that men looking admiringly at women is in anyway related to lust, not unless it involves envy and covetness. Finding women sexually desirable is just a healthy part of male biology and it’s a pity men have been so shamed for it.

41. Alex,

    You are missing the point entirely. While men and women are both sexual beings, Men are primarily sexual first, and relational second. Women are relational first and sexual second. It has ZERO to do with cultural conditioning, and everything to do with the design of God.

    In fact if you look at studies that examine the chemistry of sex – men have a MUCH larger rush of dopamine(which gives physical pleasure) before, during and at the point of orgasm than women do. Women on the other hand have a much higher emotional release – the Oxytocin that is released in a woman during sex and orgasm is more potent because she has so much more estrogen than a man. So it is a biological fact that sex is more physically pleasing to a man, and more emotionally pleasing to a woman.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2031498/Sex-Why-makes-women-fall-love–just-makes-men-want-MORE.html

42. Alex,

    You said:

    “Because as it turns out, women also view other women as a collection of body parts. Also, men tend to view other men as whole bodies rather than as a collection of parts. Why is this? Does it mean that all women are secretly lesbian because they only objectify women in that way, or maybe all men are secretly gay because they can only appreciate men’s looks as a whole rather than as parts of a whole? Or does it suggest that viewing women as a collection of body parts is related to something other than sexuality? Personally, I’m guessing that it’s the latter, and the people who conducted the study suggested that too:”

    Let’s zoom in on this phrase you said “Or does it suggest that viewing women as a collection of body parts is related to something other than sexuality?”

    I can guarantee that if you had 100 men read your statement and they were being honest and candid and not saying what women want to hear, except for the gay and asexual men they would all say “ABSOLUTELY we view women’s body parts from a primarily SEXUAL way”. Even with gay men – they are very visual when it comes to the men. They simply have their visual sexuality corrupted by sin, but men are visual beings, and I mean visual in a SEXUAL way.

43. sheepdog,

    Nice to hear from you and virtually meet the blessed husband of DragonFly.

    I wanted to zoom in on something you said:

    “Initial thoughts just happen in men, there is no way around it, that is how we are made, but to let it take hold, that is when it could turn to coveting.”

    I think you and I agree that we have to guard our normal sexual thoughts as men from turning into envy and covetousness toward women. You and I would also agree that men can have initial thoughts of a woman and again no sin has been committed, it part of our natural design. But I think you and I may have a disagreement as to your “let it take hold” statement if I understand you correctly(and I may not be).

    I agree that we if we have a sexual fantasy or thoughts about a woman other than our wife it can lead to covetousness. But I look at it in the same way that drinking can lead to drunkenness or owning a gun can lead to murdering someone. Just because something could lead to something bad, does not make that thing bad in and of itself. Some Christians believe that we cannot allow ourselves to entertain any sexual fantasies of other women, else it might lead to covetousness.

    But I personally do not believe the battle against sexual covetousness is primarily in the area of sexual fantasy as many Christians do. I believe it starts when we think of ways to flirt and talk with a woman. There is no way anything will happen with a woman I work with(or you work with) without flirting and inappropriate talk about intimate details being exchanged first. Find me a man who has an affair with a woman at work, and I will show you a man that had been flirting with her and talking to her about things he should not have been. For some men it is just sharing marriage issues, but men need to guard against forming intimate emotional connections with women other than their wives – this is where the real danger lies. It does not lie in just sexual fantasies in most cases.

    Don’t worry about offending me by having a difference on this by the way – I can take it as your wife can attest to. I would just like to hear your clarification of what you meant by “let it take hold”.

    As to watching movies with sex scenes I “think” we are seeing this the same. A sex scene can simply provide sexual arousal and inspiration but it does not mean that a man wants to find that woman and go have sex with her. I agree that if your obsession with an actress interferes with you sexual relationship with your wife then that is problem.

44. “I can guarantee that if you had 100 men read your statement and they were being honest and candid and not saying what women want to hear, except for the gay and asexual men they would all say “ABSOLUTELY we view women’s body parts from a primarily SEXUAL way”. Even with gay men – they are very visual when it comes to the men. They simply have their visual sexuality corrupted by sin, but men are visual beings, and I mean visual in a SEXUAL way.”

    I’m making a distinction between “being aroused by visual stimulation, such as a beautiful woman” and “viewing a woman as a collection of body parts rather than as an attractive whole.” I’m not sure if that distinction is coming across clearly. To be more to the point, I’m sure that straight men view women’s physical being in a primarily sexual way. I’m not so sure that seeing women as a collection of sexual parts rather than as a whole is a product of visually driven sexual urges or something else.

    “Alex – I feel like you are going out of your way to try and show that men and women are not really that different when it comes to sex, when biology, scientific studies and just looking at the people around us tells us a very different story.”

    Not so much. What I’m trying to express is that while there are general differences between the sexes on sex, I don’t think that you have a great grasp of what women want. You emphasize constantly the need for an emotional connection and romance, which you also say that wives need to learn to do without sometimes, but you don’t pay much mind to the physical side of it for women. (You also don’t acknowledge that women can greatly enjoy sex that happens spontaneously, passionately, and intensely. They don’t usually want every sexual encounter to be a quickie that happens when you walk through the door, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t like it sometimes.) I know that you’re not writing a blog for seduction tips, but you’ve never so much as suggested that married couples can improve their sex lives and that men can get more sex and more sexual enthusiasm from their wives if they figure out ways to turn her on and get her thinking about sex.

    I think that you fall into the trap of assuming that it’s almost all emotional for women and almost all physical/visual for men while barely acknowledging physical factors that are of equal and sometimes greater importance for women or psychological/emotional factors than can positively or negatively affect men’s desire, performance, and enjoyment. Does the emotional factor tend to be more important for women than it does for men? The studies do suggest that that is a general trend. However, the studies also suggest that other forms of physical stimulation (i.e. non-visual ones) are also extremely important for women. Do men tend to be more visual? Yes, especially in the sense that men get more aroused by looks. Does this mean that men’s looks have no effect on women or their attraction/arousal with regards to their husbands or any men whom they are looking to consider marrying? No.

    Finally, you have to keep in mind that these studies are presenting averages. Sexual nature and tendencies definitely exist on a spectrum, along with all other neurological differences. Some women have a more masculine sexual nature while some men have a more feminine one. While it’s good to be generally aware of these differences, it’s also important to get to know your spouse as an individual rather than as a member of the “mysterious” other sex.

    I know that mine didn’t line up with a lot of what I’d been told men would be like sexually (hope this isn’t too TMI: while he’s extremely visually driven and very in the mood when he’s in a good mood, he’s also very emotionally driven, and I’ve learned that talking out stuff that’s bothering him first is essential), and it confused and upset me at first. It made me think that something was wrong with me. Then I realized that it was just the way that he was, got to understand that side of him better, and improved everything because I listened to him about what he wanted rather than what the studies said. Maybe telling young girls that all the men out there will be one way works out for most of them, but it certainly didn’t for me. It could have wrecked everything if I hadn’t adapted to him. I’d have lost him if I’d decided to insist, “But the studies say that you won’t ever want an emotional connection first! You must be suppressing your true self.” And let me be clear: I didn’t try to change him into something that I wanted him to be. I started off trying to be the lover that I was told that he’d want. It caused issues until I learned to be the lover that he actually wanted, and it made us both much happier.

45. “You are missing the point entirely. While men and women are both sexual beings, Men are primarily sexual first, and relational second. Women are relational first and sexual second. It has ZERO to do with cultural conditioning, and everything to do with the design of God.”

    No, I get that that’s your point. I’m pointing out why I don’t think that your studies actually prove that.

    “In fact if you look at studies that examine the chemistry of sex – men have a MUCH larger rush of dopamine(which gives physical pleasure) before, during and at the point of orgasm than women do. Women on the other hand have a much higher emotional release – the Oxytocin that is released in a woman during sex and orgasm is more potent because she has so much more estrogen than a man. So it is a biological fact that sex is more physically pleasing to a man, and more emotionally pleasing to a woman.”

    Yet even if that were true (and the fact that women’s orgasms are actually longer, more satisfying, and more intense and don’t typically lead to a refractory period suggests that it isn’t true that sex is less physically satisfying for women than it is for men), it doesn’t suggest that women are relational first and sexual second or that men are sexual first and relational second. Your study is talking about the effect that sex has on men and women as they’re having it, not the reasons that men and women have sex at all.

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