This reminds me…back in the day when satellite dishes were 6 feet wide and did not require a monthly service fee, I was a teenager and my cousins had one of these, and whenever I was over there and all our parents were out of the house we’d search through various satellites until we found some porn. So, we’re watching this one movie, this sex scene lasts somewhere upwards of 20 minutes, but right around the time when you’d expect the money shot, the guy pulls out and tells the woman, “I can’t do this…I can’t cheat on my wife.” Aparently blowing his wad in her presence would have been crossing a line…I’m certain had the character been a real person, he would have had no problem finishing himself off in the bathroom, then it wouldn’t have counted.
Yes, I know this is a fictional character and all, but I have to imagine that there are people who have done something very similar to this, whose personal definition of where one crosses the line goes quite a bit farther than the mainstream. I think it tends to boil down to the fact that most of us have an amazing capacity to convince ourselves of whatever we want to believe, even if no one would objectively agree with them.
If you think about it, how many married guys ocassionally whack off to porn? Isn’t that being “intellectually” unfaithful? I mean, you’re deriving sexual pleasure from the images and actions of a person who is not your spouse, right? But yet, the lack of the physical presence of the other person means that no matter what your thoughts and actions may be, you’re not really crossing a line. I’d venture a guess that while some would say this is a form of cheating, most would say it’s not really the same.
Yet, if one is in the presence of another person in a situation that “could” become sexual, but neither party is interested in it going there, everyone suddenly says it IS cheating, even though we have intent to receive sexual gratification in the porn situation, but no intent in say the shower situation, the difference being the physical presence of the other person, which lends itself to the physical ability to have sex, intent and desire seem strangely to be less important than proximity it would seem.
So, where does that leave strippers? Married guys (and women) go to see strippers, you have a completely naked person gyrating inches from you, touching you, acting in a very sexual way, and what do you do with that, either pleasure yourself or pleasure your spouse afterwards (assuming of course the clubs where you see strippers are not of the variety where anything can be had for a price). The line for cheating there seems to be that you remain clothed while that person is not, or perhaps more specificially there are safeguards in place to keep fantasy from becoming reality (at least theoretically).
So if we’re to draw a line in the sand, what line are we drawing? That two people who are of the sexual persuasion to be attracted to each other, regardless of whether they actually are or not, actually physically view each other while both are without clothing in a situation where hypothetically they could engage in intercourse, then it’s not OK, but if you somehow remove the hypothetical ability for actual physical congress to occur, then it is OK? Again, one could bring up strippers in the “girl behind glass” scenario where indeed there could even be two naked people pleasuring themselves, however, the physical separation (and the laws prohibiting sex for money) prevent actual sexual acts.
It would seem that intellectual desire to derive sexual pleasure from a person who is not your spouse is considered to be a natural human state (which is to be fair a hormonal/biological imperative of the species), in other words the difference is whether or not one takes physical action on the inate desire, or denies the baser instinct in favor of the marital commitment, and that makes sense. And one can do any number of things as long as they do not cross the line between intellectual/fantasy, and physical/reality. So to put one’s self in the place where that line could be crossed, even if there was no specific intent to cross it would seem to be an unacceptable behavior, and that too seems fair because what one intends to do fully clothed can change fairly quickly when one is met with certain forms of temptation.
Which begs the question, would it be impossible for two heterosexual people of the opposite sex, neither of whom was in any way obviously hideous to the other so as to be completely undesirable even if made completley available to the other party, to see each other naked and not acknowledge or act on any desires which may catch them off guard? Well, it is theoretically possible…it is tempting the fates, but it is possible. I would venture a guess that more happily married people would believe themselves to be capable of resisting such temptation than would actually be able to do it. Indeed, one could construct a scenario where the uninvolved spouse might actually approve of putting the spouse in such a situation to test his/her loyalty. Morality is an interesting and very subjective thing and I’d say the only opinions that really matter on the subject are three or four people…the two doing the showering and the spouse(s) of the one/those doing the showering. In a situation such as the one I described above (the test of loyalty), perhaps all parties would agree it is NOT cheating if nothing happens.
That having been said, no, I probably won’t be showering with any women other than my wife.
Composing members:
0
Composing members:
0
