Wonderfully Made – Build Successful Marriages

You must have read about Tiger Woods and his strings of affairs.

Did you also read of Joanne Soh’s column in response of Mr Woods escapades: “My mum is right: Men are pigs“ in the New Paper?

Her column received a barrage of replies via the forum, most of whom criticizes her for putting men down and calling them ‘pigs’.

While I am not about to add ‘wood’ to the fire, I wish to share our personal experience in dealing with what Joanne Soh talked about  - the ’roving eyes’ of men.

Let me start by just acknowledging as a man, that Joanne is right. Man are indeed born with roving eyes. Me included.

That has got Joanne to equate men with ‘pigs’. Well, I used to tell my wife, or other women whom I have a decent friendship with, or girls whom I wish to impart protective knowledge to, that all men are, (are you ready for this), ‘beasts’.

Why do I term my very own gender group of people (which includes me) with such a animalistic term? This, (and I hope all you girls out there are listening) is because men has a natural instinctive ability to divorce love from sex. This practically also means that man has an inability to stop lusting even after he has found, love. Realistically, it means that it is so easy for a man, even after he has been married to his beloved wife and had both love and sex from her, to still be drawn to other lust infecting objects.

Which probably explains why Mr goody image Tiger Woods, despite having it all, you name it - talent; money; fame; a hot wife etc, could not stop himself from succumbing to the lure of lust.

And it’s not that these men who succumb to lust does not love their wife. Many of them do treasure their sweetheart whom they married and the family and home which they have painstakingly built up. They wish to be good husbands and fathers. Without their wives, some of them can even feel lost, inadequate or incomplete.

But despite the love and kindness these husbands harbour for their wives and family, they can’t deny that they have this innate attraction to ‘those things that looked good and is naturally attractive’ to their eyes. It can be as simple as how a child is attracted to bright colours, how tourists are all attracted to breathtaking sights – men are attracted to any visual images or sights that brews lust in them.

Before you womenfolk cast a stone at us, I wish you to understand, it’s no fault of us, really. Some of us wish that we are not born this way. But we are. And there ain’t anything we can do to change this fact.

The adage, “Men gives love for sex, women gives sex for love,” holds true.

The majority of men I know, kind of give up on this need to struggle against their innate lust nature. It’s just too hard or impossible to fight, they feel. Many of them also embrace their gender unique nature and see it as a norm to acquire lust as long as it does not harm. And they believed that as long as they don’t tell, they won’t harm. Among my guy friends, I know it’s not uncommon for infidelity to take place, even if they are married, especially when overseas, in Army or out for some function or pubbing with other guys.

Ironically, many wives played a part to compromise their guy’s moral resolve. For example, I have heard many times of how some wives find it ok to engage in pornography watching with their husbands. Some so called relationship experts or magazines even termed it healthy fun. This is furthest from the truth. When guys engage in pornography whether with or without their wives, they are feeding that innate lustful nature. That which is being fed, grows. The guy that feeds the desire of seeing pretty naked women in the films is more likely to give in to tantalizing temptations in real life. After all, it seems like his wife approves of it by showing understanding to his boredom and allowing other women to come in through visual images. And lust can never be fed enough. You can never finally feel satisfied or full after tasting a certain number of women. The insatiable appetite finds it’s best excuse to engage in it’s same course over and over again. This is the same reason why when couples engage in pre-marital sex, they compromises the guy’s resolve to keep sex within marriage as well.

So how do Roxanne and me cope with this innate weakness of mine? I will share more in my next post!