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Ethan Todras-Whitehill
Punch-for-Punch: Lifting The Gaze of the Wandering Eye
7 Comments | posted May 07th, 2007 at 01:44 pm by Ethan Todras-Whitehill

General Review of the Sex Situation
by Dorothy Parker

Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman’s moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?

If you don’t believe men are genetically predisposed to want a variety of women, you should try being one sometime. Each sustained eye contact on the subway, each wink at a bar, each swish of a skirt in the street, creates in so many committed boyfriends and husbands I know a momentary flash of anguish at not pursuing the opportunity. Or consider how guys respond when their girlfriends cut their hair, or dye it. He’s quite a bit more amorous, turned on by the illusion of a new girl in his bed.

This is, of course, a stereotype. But zoologically, it makes a tremendous amount of sense. A man’s evolutionary success hinges on his ability to impregnate the most women possible. A woman’s success relies on her ability to attract a genetically superior mate who will insure the survival of her offspring. But are we merely animals?

Obviously, some women have the wandering eye too. But I don’t think the underlying reasons—or the frequency—are the same. I would argue, with admittedly no first-hand knowledge of the female mind, that when women survey the field, even though it doesn’t feel like it, they’re looking for a better mate. (Obviously, there are exceptions. Both sexes will cheat for a variety of psychological reasons which are too numerous to list.) Most women I know in a successful relationship with whom I have spoken about this claim that their wandering eye turns off, to come on again only when relations with their mate degrade.

I am a firm believer in committed monogamy. Isn’t that a contradiction, you’re probably asking, if I believe the natural state of affairs I describe above? No: just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s right.

In this age of instant gratification, where bathing suits and skirts leave little to the imagination and a web site that takes ten seconds to load is “obnoxious,” there are precious few voices to tell us our every desire shouldn’t be immediately met. (Actually, there’s religion, but for many people that voice is muted or nonexistent.) Philosophers have been concerned with this issue for centuries, and they have always addressed it with some form of transcendence, the idea that a person can think and act for long-term and/or causes beyond himself rather than his immediate desires. (On a small level, investing money for retirement is a form of transcending immediate circumstances. On a larger level, so is devoting your life to the betterment of the world.)

A brief philosophical history of transcendence: In Plato’s Republic, perhaps the most important philosophical text of all time, Socrates aimed to persuade the youth of Athens to forgo their revolutionary urges by focusing them on the higher pursuit of philosophy. Christianity took this idea in a very different direction and for hundreds of years dominated this conversation based on a doctrine of self-denial “prescribed by God.” Then in the Enlightenment, a repudiation to this thinking emerged based on scientific principles, asserting that our actions are mere response to stimuli, and inherently selfish. Transcendence, they thought, is moot. This spurred a counter-reaction along a variety of lines, from the Utilitarian (Mill) to the Romantic (Rousseau).

To focus on Rousseau a second: he defined the modern “social contract” in which a group of individuals agree to pool their individual wills into a group will, a society. This thinking heavily influenced the American and French constitutions, and through them the modern democratic state. But Rousseau also talked about an inevitable degradation of the social contract, in which individuals will start listening to their own desires and ignoring the larger, long-term issues. I think Rousseau would believe that America is experiencing such a degradation today.

Bringing it back, the institution of marriage, I would argue, is a societal and religious institution constructed with the goal of helping individuals, particularly men, transcend their sexual nature. That’s why people talk about “having a good marriage,” or doing things “for the marriage,” as if it were a force outside of themselves. In effect, it is—one to which society and religion urges people to lift their gaze to keep themselves in check.

On a personal level, since I am not guided by a religious doctrine but by philosophical ones, I think a major challenge of life is figuring out which basic human desires to indulge and which to transcend. And the wandering eye, for me, falls firmly in the “transcend” column. And while it is often frustrating, and feels like a chore, I actually love the struggle.

Thought is not action. Despite Hugo Schwyzer’s persuasive arguments in response to my post on pornography and compartmentalization, I believe that fantasizing about a woman in the street is a far cry from walking up to her and getting her phone number. But in the space between those two lies a glorious, quotidian battle, a microcosm of one of the most important tasks that mankind faces. So instead of a chore, I see it as an opportunity, an every day chance to flex and develop my mental and emotional muscles, my ability to put my long-term interests and the interests of others ahead of my own base desires. And of course, it is consistently rewarding: each glance at a picture of my girlfriend, each text message I get from her, is my prize.

It is, one might even say, transcendent.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Relationships, Gender, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 7 responses

  1. And while it is often frustrating, and feels like a chore, I actually love the struggle.

    Dude, I love you for that. Good post.

    May 7th, 2007 | 1:47 pm
  2. Theo Gangi

    I agree, well done.
    I do also think men have a nesting instinct, and that it’s not necessarily a matter of transcending nature, but civilizing an naturally bred conflict.

    May 7th, 2007 | 8:09 pm
  3. Velma

    So instead of a chore, I see it as an opportunity, an every day chance to flex and develop my mental and emotional muscles, my ability to put my long-term interests and the interests of others ahead of my own base desires.

    Intriguing. I feel much the same way, and for much the same reasons, though I don’t think of my desires as base. Immediate desire/instant gratification is not base, but should (at least for me) not be indulged immediately. Mindfully pursuing pleasures, with thoughts towards long-term benefits, has been much better for me. (Data points: I am a polyamorous woman, who’s been actively poly for almost thirty years. Mindful pursuit of pleasures means fewer regrets.)

    May 8th, 2007 | 3:03 pm
  4. Lore

    Interesting post. Actually my boyfriend and I were discussing this today. I’m quite insecure, well I’m quite young (he’s 3 years older han me), and that makes me always wanting to compete to other women I see as “threats”. Of course, my boyfriend loves me, and thinks I’m gorgeous, but I’ve never been typically beautiful, nor have I always been considered beautiful. And also, I grew up with the notion that all men are shallow, so I’ve always been paranoid abput my looks. But just recently, I realized that I might be even MORE shallow than men for focusing so much on MY looks (and other women’s). Don’t get me wrong, I put love above anything else, but I still want to be attractive… all that makes me wish I was more sensible and mature, rather being more attractive.

    Well, back to my boyfriend and I. We were talking about this, and I told him that famous line “I only have eyes for you” is a total lie, that it should be replaced with “I only have heart for you”, because that’s what it actually means (”I love you and no one else”). I told him he might love ME and no one else, but that I know he desires more women. He replied “Well, it’s actually nice to fight your instincts, you know?”. I thought he was saying that just to make me feel better, but I think maybe he wasn’t, because what you wrote totally backs that statement up. I didn’t know men saw fighting their wandering eye as true and rewarding self improvement. But hey, that’s great! It makes me more hopeful, and it makes me break that stereotype I have in my head about men being shallow, sexed up pigs. Maybe I am really more shallow than men. God, I wish I was mature! (BTW, I’m just 18…). Great post.

    May 8th, 2007 | 11:26 pm
  5. Velma: I think it’s all a matter of perspective. If you’re polyamorous, there isn’t a compelling reason to overcome that particular desire. But you do make a good point, which is that it is only a “base” desire because it conflicts with a monogamous relationship. If it didn’t, one could put it in the “indulge” category along with hunger and thirst.

    Lore: Not every guy has a wandering eye (although I bet most do), and certainly not everyone takes that as an opportunity to transcend. Nevertheless, I do think this is more universal than people expect. Furthermore, as you show, it’s really hard to convince your girlfriend that you desire other women, but that your desire to RESIST that desire is even stronger. It must feel like part of your boyfriend is your ally, and part of him is your enemy, which is a weird way to feel about a lover. But from my experience, any guy who embraces that struggle is serious boyfriend material.

    May 9th, 2007 | 11:19 am
  6. the institution of marriage… is a societal and religious institution constructed with the goal of helping individuals, particularly men, transcend their sexual nature.

    I would slightly rephrase that to:

    the institution of marriage… is a societal and religious institution that EVOLVED with the EFFECT of helping individuals, particularly men, transcend their sexual nature.

    I guess my current feelings about this are as follows:
    1. Marriage has been around too long and in too many different places to be societally generated. It is societally TRANSMITTED, but I think marriage is a behavior — like the use of tools — naturally selected because it aided human survival. Marriage made those who practiced it (or their offspring, or their societies) more likely to survive.

    I’ll talk to you about the source of religious laws at a later date.

    May 10th, 2007 | 1:30 pm
  7. […] guess I find asceticism scary. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how I believe a major human struggle is figuring out which natural desires to indulge and which to t…. Well, I’m fully aware of the various aspects of self that people deny for the sake of their […]

    May 29th, 2007 | 1:09 pm

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