Attraction vs. Lust // Hump Day Q&A

Foreign. You know what time it is, sweetie?

It's hump day. Q and A time.

Hump day, Q and A. Hump day, Q and A. Welcome to the Naked Marriage Podcast. Hump day Q and A. We love answering your questions. So every Wednesday we're dropping a special podcast episode focused on one of your questions. You can submit your own marriage related question online@nakedmarriagepodcast.com or by sending us a message on Instagram aveandashleywillis. We've got a great question today, so let's dive in.

So our question today is, is it okay to be attracted to other people when you're married? My husband says it's okay because he's not acting on it and still continuously choosing me. Regardless of who he sees, it deeply hurts my feelings to hear him say that. I feel like attraction is one step away from lust, which leads to sin. I would love to hear your wisdom on this subject. That's a good question.

It's a great, great question. And it's very nuanced. And it's one where there's a lot of feelings involved because we obviously wanna have eyes only for our spouse, but we live in a world where you're gonna see other people and we can't pretend that those other people don't exist. And there's certainly a distinction between noticing that someone's an attractive human being and allowing lust to take over. Where we're playing graphic sexual fantasies with that person out in our mind. There's a world of difference between those two. So I think there's maybe a lot going on here. But first, thank you for the question. I think that this is something that's a dynamic in a lot of marriages. Is your husband doing everything possible to make sure that, you know that he chooses you completely, that he has eyes only for you in terms of, you know, all of my desire is focused on you, and I love you and I adore you and choose you and respect you. And when I say that I notice that another person's attractive, I'm not doing it in any way to take away from you. Though it's probably maybe not the wisest thing for him to point out that it's attractive. You can have that thought in your mind like, that's an attractive person, without having to plant seeds of insecurity by saying, oh, that's an attractive person. Here I'd recommend, as a next step to help both of you, a book for each of you to read, a little bit of homework. And neither of these books are our own. But they're books that I think that could help each of you in different ways. For the husband, I would recommend the book Every Man's Battle, which is all about lust and how the Bible teaches clearly that lust, the sin to objectify human beings in our mind is a sin and how to just control the battle in our minds as being visual creatures. And it could be a really helpful book for you as the wife, A book by our dear friend Shanti Feldhahn, who is a wonderful Christian writer, researcher, and to help women kind of understand the male thought process and maybe not feel so. Not to feel insecurity by it, but to help really understand, she wrote a great book called Through a Man's Helping Women Understand the Visual Nature of Men. If you would read that book and at the same time your husband would read the Every Man's Battle book, I think it could prompt some really healthy new behaviors in him and also some mindsets in you that are going to help you just navigate this together with more unity.

I love that, and those are awesome resources. But I also wanna say too, I think you need to make it clear to your husband that him telling you this is just so deeply hurtful because. And maybe in his mind, he's like, I'm being honest with you. I'm just being honest with you. But what you hear, if I'm understanding correctly from this question, is you hear, not only does he think that person's pretty or hot or whatever, but that he's also thinking about that person. Like, that he. For him to tell you that person is attractive, that means he's given it more than just. He's given that person more than a glance. And that is hurtful because that is when it takes root. I mean, when you, you know, like Dave said, you can't control the attractive person walking by and the fact that they're attractive and that your eyes notice them, you can't help that. But lingering on that thought of how attractive they are or, you know, even possibly having fantasies about that person, that's where it's a problem. And so I think that maybe just making it that crystal clear to him and saying, like, you know, how would you feel if, you know, the attractive neighbor next door that we both know is like a really hot guy, if I constantly pointed out how attractive he is? I mean, would you like that?

You think our neighbor's a hot guy? No.

No. But you know what I'm saying, Like, I think men and women both can recognize when someone's attractive. Like it doesn't take rocket science. I mean, and granted, I know there's the eye of the beholder, right? Am I saying that it's in the eye of the beholder? Objective.

But I think, you know, most people can.

You can say, yes, that person is pretty, that person is. Is handsome, whatever. But I think that constantly talking about it, it does make you wonder. It makes you think, well, why are you. If this is something you want to talk to me about instead, let's flip it and let's talk about how we can really deepen our attraction for one another and have more intimacy. Let's focus on us and not these outside people, right?

And have the discretion. We want to have full discretionary honesty in marriage. But there's a big difference between deception and discretion. And so discretion means, like, every thought that pops into your head that might be hurtful to blurt, you don't have to be, like, telling your spouse, like, oh, that's a hot girl, or whatever. But when those thoughts come into your own mind, to take those thoughts captive, take them captive, like Ashley just said, which is a biblical principle, and say, you know, I'm not gonna dwell on that. That's an attractive person, and I'm gonna move on. But that's not my wife. And that's. Every time I see a pretty woman, I think to myself, well, that's not my wife. That's not my wife. Cause my wife is the one person where I can focus all of that energy and all of that. And focusing that desire anywhere else, whether it's a person walking by or a digital image on a screen, is out of bounds. And it's ultimately going to hurt me. It's going to hurt my marriage. And so I hope that that gives some insight and those additional resources that we pointed out can help deepen the conversation and understanding in your marriage.