Timeless Wisdom: Men's Sexual Nature (Part 3) - What Men, Women & Society Can Do With Men’s Sexua...

For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now Denise, Lee, and Shelley are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends, the podcast. Each week they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's Word, and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs, and a lot of Jesus to hold it together, Circle of Friends, the podcast, is waiting for you. Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts and circle up with Point of Grace.

Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com. So this week I want to discuss with you what can we do about it. Okay? And I have 3 parts. What can society do about it? What can men do about it, which is the most important? And what can women do about it? Which is important, but the most important is for the problem himself to figure out what to do. But in any event, if I'm right, in other words, everything flows from the problem of male sexuality. Its variety orientation, its non-love orientation, its climax orientation, its variety, superficiality, etc. If that is correct, then we have the question: what do we do about it? So, let me begin with what men can do about it, because that's the most important, then talk to you about what society can do, and what women can do. Men have a number of choices about what to do with their demon. Every man, homosexual and heterosexual, virtually every man. There are truly men with lesser libidos. I haven't met one, but I have read about them. They exist. But I really, I'm not joking, I have not met one. Any male that I've talked to had similar reactions to what I expressed to you last week. I'm not joking, though, to say that there are men who are less sexually driven, obviously, just as there are women who may have more of a male-type sex urge. That will exist, too. But you can't talk about the rarity, you talk about the great majority, because that's what we deal with. So what does a man do with this demon? He has it. There's nothing that he can't get rid of it. I'm not sure even if castration would work. They have tried this with male sexual offenders, right? Just recently, one who was chemically castrated and then went on to, uh, to molest a child, uh, which was very, uh, very distressing, to say the least. But, I don't know, what does a man do with this? He can't ignore it, so he either gives into it or doesn't give into it, or partially gives into it, or whatever. So I have listed the good choices and the not good choices that a man could make to do with this. Let's talk about the not good choices first. He could live going sexually from woman to woman. It could either be serial monogamy or just constant variety, right? That is one not-good choice that a man can make. That is a response of giving in to his natural drive. Live a life going from bed to bed, from female body to female body. He may do it with some trappings of relationships, and he may not. This is where you get the classic commitment phobia that women talk about in men. Men are born with commitment phobia in that regard. They don't have commitment phobia in other regards. Men can easily commit to a company. See, it's very important. Men don't have commitment phobia in general. They have commitment phobia sexually. They have it vis-à-vis men if they are homosexual, women if they're heterosexual. So that is one possible choice for a man. Why it's not a good choice, I will tell you in a moment. Because you might say, "What's wrong with that? So long as he is not raping anybody, and he's not drugging women, and he is not misleading anybody, and not producing kids out of wedlock, and not passing sexually transmitted diseases, what's wrong with that?" And a lot of men feel that. You know, you live once, and frankly, I'd rather live with the excitement, and excitement is going to be the key word tonight. This is very exciting. This is an exciting life. It's boring emotionally. It is boring intellectually. It is boring psychologically. But it is very exciting to seduce and to act the physical act itself of sex with woman after woman. Another possibility which is related to this, obviously, is to go to prostitutes. Prostitution, they say, is the oldest profession in the world. The reason that that is said is because it so responds to male desires. The advantage of prostitution is that it can accompany, or so a man may feel, and to a certain extent that is true, it can accompany, unlike Bad choice 1, bad choice, or not, I really actually said not good choice. Bad makes a moral judgment that in this arena I'm not prepared yet to make. Not good choice number 1 is different from not good choice number 2 of going to prostitutes. The going to prostitutes can accompany commitment to a wife, and has through much of human history. I'll take, you know, I'll take an hour break today and visit a massage parlor or a house of ill repute, whatever it might be called, at any time. The majority of prostitutes' clients are not necessarily single men who can't find a woman. They are probably at least half married men. So that's another possibility. Every society that we know of in history has had prostitution. In another session I will talk about whether it should be legalized or not. It's an extremely complex question. Very, it's very tough and I'm torn over it. Third is marry. Third not good choice, but very widely pursued in this world. It's not American, but it is European and Latin. Marry is and have a mistress. It is very common. The Prime Minister of France, you will recall, actually had a child with a mistress. And the child and the mistress showed up at his funeral. Was it last year or the year before? It is extremely accepted in Europe, most European society, in Latin society, that a married man has affairs. And they feel that it's the best of all worlds. That way he is committed to a woman, he does get— best of all worlds for him, let's put it that way. He has his cake and he can get to eat it as well. And how so? He has a wife, he has a home, he has children, he has family, and he gets to fool around sexually as per his lusts. Libidinous desires. It is also, to many of the women in that society, not entirely objectionable. So long as it's clear she's just a mistress, so long as they are second-rate, so long as he doesn't bring them home, so long as I'm number one, the kids are number one, and if he doesn't flaunt her in public, what do I care? There will be a lot of wives from Italy westward and through South America who will say that. And if you interviewed her and said, "Well, are you happy he does it?" "I am happy that I am married. It is better than if I had remained alone in this society. I have him, I have children, I have a family. If he needs to do his thing elsewhere, as long as I am not publicly humiliated, I could certainly live with it." I am the matriarch of a family now. At least I have that, and that's a big at least. So don't— I don't happen to accept this as a viable option. I don't think it's a good thing, or a healthy thing, but I don't knock it as a solution to the problem of male sexuality. It seems to work in many ways. You get families, you get stability. In fact, I would argue that it could be argued, if that's not an odd way, in other words, a secondary argument, that perhaps America's greater divorce rate than Europe may be in part due to the fact that we don't accept mistresses and affairs. And that men who have them, it often leads to divorce. Now, that's not an argument that we should therefore have it. What we want are good marriages, and stable marriages, and fidelity, and so on, but living living in the real world and not in just what I would like to see, I think that that is an argument that can be sustained. That there is less divorce in these countries because there is less need to. If already he can have his affairs and comes home at night, then everybody, so to speak, is happy. Not perfectly happy, not as happy as a good monogamous relationship, But nevertheless, stability in society has been achieved. This, if the male sexual nature is a pressure cooker, the steam has been let out through those sanctioned affairs that are not brought home, should not produce children, that is not, that obviously is a no-no for the sake of children. But I want you to understand that that is one classic answer. America and its demand for monogamy, and its stigmatization historically of affairs, and certainly mistresses, is fairly unique, if that is not an oxymoron. It comes close to being unique in world societies. It is not typical of Catholic society, of Latin society, and even parts of Protestant European society. Society. So those are some of the not-good choices. What's wrong? Why are they not good? Why is living from woman to woman a not-good choice? If the man has a stable job, is a decent person— and he could be, it doesn't mean that a man is mean, uncharitable, kicks children and dogs because he goes from woman to woman, nor does it mean that every man who is faithful to his wife is a kind man. Hitler was apparently faithful to his, not wife, but his female companion, and he was not a good man. So I'm certainly not arguing that it is an inevitable correlation of the two. So what's wrong with it? Why shouldn't— and by the way, this is not a theoretical question. For those of us males who think and who are aware of ourselves, we ask these questions. Why get married? Why not live from woman to woman? What is so wrong with living out my nature if I do a lot of good work otherwise? I mean, if all I do is attend orgies every night, I become a hedonist. But let us say I combine that, and there are men who do, with a fully functional professional life and just go from woman to woman. Well, the price paid, and not all men care about this price, That's the problem. And certainly it doesn't— it's not terribly effective when a woman tells him this is the price, because it seems that she has an axe to grind. It's why it's more effective in this case for a man to tell a man the price that is paid. He has forsaken love and personal growth, emotional growth, and other forms of growth in favor of excitement and distraction. This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

Americans have a big healthcare problem. Over 100 million citizens carry medical debt while paying for overpriced and complicated health insurance. As Christians, we don't have to pay for a broken system. Christian Healthcare Ministries is an alternative to health insurance at half the cost. Plus, you can enroll at any time. Stand up to health insurance with a biblical solution. Join CHM today by visiting chministries.org/wellness. That's chministries.org/wellness.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom. When I have covered the issue of why get married on the radio, uh, and now a lot of young women ask this question, it's not only young men who ask this question. It's more men because of the nature issue, but still in all, with societal liberation of women to make a perfectly good living on their own, and with birth control, women are asking this question too. Though by and large it is still a male question because while a 25-year-old woman may ask this question, 40-year-old women don't tend to ask this question. There is something in the female nature, thank God, otherwise almost no one would end up committed, that knows the importance of commitment, of relationship. Women are— women's genius lies in relationships, in the micro realm. Men's genius lies in the macro realm. And the two geniuses combined make a very good life. But they are very different, the natural genius of each sex. You forsake love, It's not love to go from woman to woman. It's lust. Serial monogamy is not love. Serial monogamy is serial lust. That doesn't mean that a man and a woman didn't feel love at the time, but love, I think any mature person knows, is more than just "I feel in love." If love is only "I feel in love," the violins are soaring and the trumpets are blasting and I'm about to orgasm, then love is pretty trivial, and it's pretty indistinguishable from lust. There should be a lust component to love. There's no question about it. That's what makes it different from Platonic love. There are men I truly love, but as it happens, I don't lust for them, and nor do they lust for me, to the best of my knowledge. Though I'll have to ask them after this lecture. If they do, they hide it very well, I must say. Uh, to forsake— what you forsake is love. You get a lot of lust, you get a lot of excitement, but the, the deep love and the depth of growth that is available in commitment to one person is unavailable to a man who goes from woman to woman. This may sound like, to a lot of men, especially a younger man, Oh, big deal. That's what I give up for all this fun and excitement? You gotta be joking. Okay, so I won't grow in that area. I'll grow as a scientist. I'll grow as a lawyer. I'll grow as a businessman. So I won't grow in that. Alright, thank you, have a nice day. That's it, Dennis? You mean for that I should give up all this fun and excitement? You gotta be joking. I'm not gonna chase any more women the rest of my life just because I won't grow in love? Well, that's basically right. The question is, do people want to grow? We have a fairly non-growth society. You ask college students what they want, what are their goals in life, very few will say, "I want to grow, I want to be mature, I want to develop." It's, "I want to be rich, I want to be happy." I want to be successful, I want to be smart, I want to do well. Maybe even I want a family, which is a good thing. But the thought of growth, which is only available— and the only people who know this really are those who've had love. If you have had love over the course of time with a woman— women know this, so I'm directing this to men— you know what I'm talking about. Women almost instinctively know what I'm talking about what it is to grow, what it is to mature, what it is to develop a relationship and intimacy with one person. To a man, this is mostly terra incognita, foreign territory, land that they don't naturally gravitate to. But men know this if they have experienced it. Is it valuable? Well, I think, as a male who totally identifies with the libidinous drives I described, that it's ultimately more valuable than all the bedding of women in the world. The other has an appeal, but it is ephemeral. It's transient, it's superficial, it ends the moment the orgasm ends. Then what? Then what? And you see, there's another problem too. I take this motto from, of all people, And this comes from my early days studying Russian history. The czar's minister, Pavyedenostsev— I don't know why I remember that, but I took Russian, so I remember these names. Pavyedenostsev, under the czar, had a great rationale for why the Russian Empire should keep expanding. It was brilliant, and he said, "That which does not expand contracts." I have adopted Pavey Danostsev's rationale for the Russian Empire expanding to all of life. That which doesn't grow contracts. Any relationship you have either grows or contracts. Nothing stays the same. If it stays the same, it's getting smaller. And so what happens with a lot of men And women know this. If they meet a man who, by a certain age— and you can fill in the age you want, 40, 45, 35, 50, whatever you want to fill in— a man who has not had a very serious committed relationship, married and divorced, or very long serious committed relationship in some other way, most women don't think that that guy is good material for marriage. And they're right. In most cases, he's not. Because he hasn't grown. He's a 45-year-old boy. There are a lot of 45-year-old boys around. Most of the time, girls become women. That's the natural evolution of things. Boys do not become men just because they get older. They just become older boys. I saw one in a Porsche just on the way here, in fact. I don't know why that's their car of choice. Old boys are recognizable because they live, act, talk like boys, just they're in men's bodies. And men can spot them, just like women can spot fake women. Men can spot fake men in a nanosecond, generally speaking. And these guys exist. And it is a very unfortunate thing. So what do you have to look back on your life when you are retiring from life through death or just getting slowed down through old age? God, I was with 1,000 women. What a remarkable thing to say. What a victory for the human spirit. So what? So what? I mean, what does it add up to? That's the question. It added up to a lot of moments of excitement, which I don't pooh-pooh. There is— it is exciting, I don't deny that for a nanosecond, as a male. But what does it add up to? As opposed to what does a relationship add up to? What does a family add up to? What do— what does making couples friends through your marriage add up to? I mean, these things add up to something far greater than than all the accumulated excitements. There's another interesting thought which my friend Dr. Stephen Marmer mentioned to me when I reviewed this with him. He said, "Without love and/or family, a man can become irrelevant." It's an interesting word, this irrelevant word. And I would— I didn't— it was a brief conversation, but when I thought about it, I realized, and I put it in this word, almost all of us men, and women, are replaceable professionally. Right? Very few of us are irreplaceable in our professional work. But every one of us is irreplaceable in our love work. Isn't that interesting? An important way to look at it? So ironically, men want to be important. This is a drive. I want to be important. It's just— men want to be important. Ironically, through love you achieve more importance because you are far more irreplaceable. You are uniquely needed by the person who loves you. That cannot be said for almost— I mean, Churchill was irreplaceable. As the leader of Britain. Okay, that's true. Salk was irreplaceable as the discoverer of the polio vaccine. But I'm talking about handfuls of people in the midst of millions of us who are replaceable in our work. As good a job as we may do, and it's wonderful to do a good job, and some work is irreplaceable, I acknowledge that, but, you know, Beethoven's irreplaceable. But by and large, we're not Beethoven, and we're not Salk, and we're not Churchill. We're maybe terrific at what we do, but the area of our most importance is to anyone who loves us. Is it a wife? Is it siblings? Is it friends? Is it children? That's where our greatest importance ironically lies. Women know this. Very few women are ake for macro-importance. They ache for micro-importance. Their nature does. Society may teach them otherwise. Male values are the most important ones. Feminism, at least in its organized self, took male values. That's the irony. It isn't— it's misnamed. It's really masculism because it took male values of macro-significance being the important thing in life. This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

Health insurance rates in America are surging, leaving millions without affordable options. But Christians don't need to waste money on a broken system. Christian Healthcare Ministries is an alternative to health insurance at half the cost. With CHM, fellow believers contribute monthly to help pay each other's medical bills while lifting one another up in prayer. It's financial and spiritual support when you need it most. Join CHM today by visiting chministries.org/wellness. That's chministries.org/wellness.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom. So they're not good choices for a man if he wants to grow, if he wants to develop, if he wants to live life fully. If he wants continual excitement, there is excitement available to some men in constantly bedding different women that may not be available with one woman. Not that she is not exciting, but it is a different form of excitement, the variety and, "Oh, look at that girl, this woman across, you know, the hall, across whatever, the office. Oof, I gotta get her," which is the male instinct. So what can men do that are good choices? Okay, now to good choices. And not— this is not in order of importance. Maybe one day I'll have an order of importance on this. This is just in the order of which I wrote it. Number 1: Know that they are insatiable. I told you last week that if God offered me clarity or happiness, I would choose clarity. Clarity or a billion dollars, I would choose clarity. I would choose clarity over just about anything except perhaps health. I mean, you know, to be clear and in an iron lung may not be a great thing. But generally speaking, I want clarity over everything. Then I know I can deal with life. If men know that they are insatiable in the sexual arena, that no matter how many women they have, they'll want another woman, there will still be another cute pair of legs at the office or in the Miss July centerfold, or on TV, or in a billboard, or in his fantasy. That is helpful to a man to understand because he'll never be satisfied. So he's pursuing a constantly moving goalpost. It is like playing football, American football. You keep getting 10 yards, but of course in football at 100 yards you get a touchdown. But satisfying the male sex drive, there's no touchdown available. You just keep getting 10 yards, more 10 yards, and more. You've gained a million yards, but you've never had the touchdown of satisfaction. It's not available in that arena. So if you know that, don't pursue it. And I believe since men are in most, not all cases, unfortunately— quite brain-centered. I'm appealing to the male brain when I say this. Guys, it doesn't work. If men could say, "You know what? I must say I am truly sexually satisfied. Bedding all these women that I meet at work and at bars, etc., is so satisfying. I am walking around so satisfied as a person, as a man." and sexually, then I would say I only have moral and love arguments like I presented. But here is a totally practical argument: it doesn't work. If it worked, I would have to acknowledge it and say, "Look, it works, but you shouldn't do it for other reasons." But it doesn't work. Ask the men who live that life. It doesn't work. Because male nature, it is insatiable. Just like it's good to keep making more and more money, but everybody wants to— if you are insatiable monetarily, no matter how much money you make, you still want to make more money. You have to at some point say, "I am happy with what I can have now." Number 2, again, what can a man do under the positive choices? One of them will be controversial, I'm not up to it yet. Seek excitement and variety elsewhere. Men ache for excitement and variety. So the trick is to get excitement and variety, just not sexually. Sexual excitement with one's wife is possible, but I'm talking about the excitement of variety— new conquering, new women, new bodies, etc. So what you should do is— definitely men need it. And that is part of the reason that men are far more crazy about hobbies than women tend to be. If you look at the subscription list of Popular Mechanics, Popular Electronics, Car and Driver, Sports Illustrated, Linn's Stamp News, Coin World, you will very rarely see Barbara, Jennifer, and Jessica. You will see 99% male names. I read about this, I'll never forget Stereophile, one of the of the 400 hobby magazines I get, listed its subscribers, and it said, "We basically have no women subscribers." For all intents and purposes, they have so few women readers to Stereophile magazine, a magazine about stereo equipment, which I— and I watch when it comes, I sometimes— my wife will say, "What are you reading?" and I will show her Stereophile, and it is clear that in under a second, Her eyes have glazed over. It has not taken a second for her to be bored. If I said to her, "Stare at a tree or read Stereophile all day," she would stare at a tree. I have the same reaction to women's shoes, I must say. My eye glaze over in under a second. A shoe is a shoe. I fake liking new shoes. I, I, "Oh, they're fantastic." Under torture, I would not recognize any of my wife's shoes. I mean, I must say, we will pull your fingernails out, tell us, does she own this or not? I would flip a coin and have my nails torn out. I am to female shoes what she is to stereo equipment. It exists for me, shoes exist to protect you from nails, and for her, stereo exists to have nice music in the background in the house. It's the opposite for each of us. For her, shoes are beautiful accouterments to the proper outfit that she's wearing, which must match. I don't know why the others didn't match, but it's a puzzle I admit to never solving. And likewise, to me, stereo is not a background. The preamplifier must have certain qualities to it that— and you can't have a simple amplifier, it has to be bi-amped, the speaker, to truly get the subwoofer effect, the under 100 Hz cycles that the human ear can't hear anyway. But in any event, that is how I look at the stereo thing. Do you know, by the way, Stereophile magazine is so male-oriented It so has given up on women reading it, they actually had— they stopped this, I don't know why— under the reviews of the stereo equipment, they would have, you know, they would say what they thought of it, and they would have WAF, Wife Acceptance Factor. Then they would rate it as WAF. So an ugly speaker would have D, you know, the WAF was D. If it was a pretty little speaker which no one saw, A+. Women want speakers that cannot be seen, and from my perspective, heard. I don't think women want to hear stereo speakers, let alone see them. In any event, that is men and their hobbies. This is our excitement. It's exciting to get new stereo equipment, to get a new CD. Also, and again I've got to thank to my psychiatrist friend Dr. Stephen Marmer, the psychiatrist I often interview on my show. And he— the analogies, our hobbies as a sublimated form of our sexual libidinous nature is remarkable. For example, those of us into classical music very often will buy innumerable versions of the same piece. I have 21 versions of Bach's Goldberg Variations. It is commonplace for even classical music-loving women to ask their husbands, "Darling, you already have 11 Brahms seconds. Why are you getting a 12th?" And he says, "No, but this one's different." This is exactly analogous. You already had 11 women Why a 12th? This is another— it's the— after all, it's the body-wise, a woman is a woman. But the very subtle differences are so exciting, just as the subtle differences in Brahms' 2nd are so exciting. So we need another version, the variety. Women don't collect CDs. I have women musician friends. Members of the LA Philharmonic. They don't have big collections of this stuff. Men do. Men collect. There was a famous novel when I was in high school, The Collector, about a man who collected women and collected butterflies. And it was the analogy of the collecting. Men like to collect. What do you think that is about? It is in part emanates from the libido. There will be a lot of arenas where men need— that's why women have to know men, just as men must know their wives, wives must know their men, and humor us. Even if it takes humor, like I will humor about shoes, I must be humored about my stereo and my CDs. In the best sense of being humored. It's valuable to you for reasons I as a woman can't figure out, just as I as a man can't figure out why 32 pairs of shoes is not enough. I'm not kidding. I'm kidding about my wife. I'm talking Imelda Marcos, right? Imelda Marcos, what did she have? 8,000 pairs of shoes? Remember that? I mean, if the woman wore a different pair every hour, she could not live long enough to wear all the shoes she bought. Right? So, you know, I don't understand that. If I had all the money in the world, I'd still have 4 pairs of shoes. It's as simple as that. I don't— but— That's why each sex has to understand, if it's important to you, it's important. End of issue. I don't know why. I'm not you. Thank God I'm not you, because male and female must have mysteries to make us who we are. This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

Health insurance rates in America are surging, leaving millions without affordable options. But Christians don't need to waste money on a broken system. Christian Healthcare Ministries is an alternative to health insurance at half the cost. With CHM, fellow believers contribute monthly to help pay each other's medical bills while lifting one another up in prayer. It's financial and spiritual support when you need it most. Join CHM today by visiting chministries.org/wellness. That's chministries.org/wellness.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom. So men need to seek excitement, and they do, and variety elsewhere. The excitement might be climbing mountains. Sir Edmund Hillary asked, why are you climbing Everest? Because it's there. Okay, men need to conquer. He conquered a mountain. He didn't conquer 100 more women, he conquered a mountain. Men need to conquer, men need to collect, men need excitement. All of this is a way of taking the libidinous drive and putting it into innocuous arenas. Men need to know this and get excitement from as many things as possible in life so that they can stay faithful. This is a very big help and women need to understand that. And so, you know, what was it, Jay Leno. What is Jay Leno? Because he has so much money, you know what he collects? Cars. Exactly. Write different varieties of cars. He wants a variety of cars. And you know it's often been said that the car is like a man's mistress in some ways. They polish it, they call it she, right? How's her motor running? They refer to it as a she. So while this is all cute and stuff, it represents a certain aspect, to the best of our knowledge. He seems to be a family man. I'm not saying the man has been saintly. I don't know and I don't care. It's none of my business. But obviously the car collection is his way of acting out this male variety and excitement and collecting orientation. Whatever it could be. Now, by the way, there is one very bad substitute for sex, the sex drive. That gives men a great deal of excitement. You know what it is? Violence. Wars. Men coming back from war have one of two stories: "It is hell, and I can't describe to you what hell it was," or "It was the best two years of my life." War is the best two years of a lot of men's lives come back from war. They were buddies with their guys. They had camaraderie and closeness and purpose and excitement and meaning. The day was filled up with tasks, with things to do. Adrenaline was running. It's a very powerful thing. That's why I never, you know, it was just a bombastic statement, but there was an understanding, even if it wasn't conscious of this, when the '60s button which read "Make love, not war." Guys, you want to get excited? Make love, not war. That would have been the preamble to that button. Guys, I know you want to get excited, just don't do it in war. Go take somebody to bed. That's what "Make love, not war" is about. Even though, as I say, it wasn't conscious necessarily in the mind of whoever made it up. Sports obviously serves that. It gets a lot of adrenaline out of the guy plays his basketball game. He's got his camaraderie with the guys. There's excitement. There's a slight amount of violence because of the pushing and shoving. It's warfare because it's competition. Men need competition. It is part of them. Just so long as it's innocuous like in a basketball game, it's just fine. They don't want to have games where there are no winners. This is a creation of Massachusetts. But it is not a good idea. Men want to have, "I won, I lost, I lost, I'll come back and win next time," or whatever it may be. Number 3, the choices that a man can make here is— let's see here— is immersion in other passionate pursuits. This is very analogous to seek excitement and variety elsewhere. I just want to use the 3 operative words in that sentence: immersion, passionate pursuit. It's interesting again, right? We pursue— what will you pursue in life is a form of asking what field will you enter, correct? But it's also you pursue women. A man pursues women. And the very idea of pursuit is used in both his professional life, what is your pursuit, and in his social life, pursuing women. Again, this sublimates or works to channel the libido into better directions. Passionate. If men are passionate about these other pursuits, which confuses— how could a man be passionate about postage stamps? Women didn't show up at stamp shows, generally speaking. I was a stamp collector as a kid. I don't remember women showing up and getting excited over a 1922 Columbus Expo unused unhinged. I mean, they thought men were unhinged. They didn't think the stamps were unhinged for getting excited over that stuff. But we get passionate over this, and passion is part of the sexual drive. It's passion, obviously. So let those passions express themselves in a number of areas and immerse, and immerse yourself in it because of another thing which I'm coming to, was number 4, and that is avoid boredom. The more a man pursues other things than sex, the less time and inclination he will have to pursue all that sex that his nature wants. He's too busy with his stamp collection, or making money, or following the Lakers, or whatever it is. Now, obvious— this is why, by the way, women understand that this can go too far. I can't get my guy away from sports. I'm a football widow, basketball widow, baseball widow. I'm a computer widow. I can't get my husband away from the computer screen. These are laments. Men immerse themselves. This is our nature. But, and I don't think it's the healthiest thing in the world when it goes too far, obviously. I think it's a bad thing, in fact. But it, again, if he didn't have those good things, those are neutral, sports and computer. Ideally, he will immerse himself in good things. Things. That's the best. But whatever the immersion, he must avoid boredom. What is the old saw that you'd never hear? What is it? Idle hands are the devil's playground or workshop or something like that. Number— what am I up to? 6? 5? 5. Avoid temptation. Very practical. Okay, it is not wise for a guy to take a business trip alone with a fellow female employee who was single from the office. Probably not wise. Married, but certainly single. And to save money, it's not wise to take the same room at the hotel. And to save water, it's not wise to take the same shower in the hotel. You know what I mean? It's good to save water. I'm all for it. Avoid flushing that often, but the shower really ought to be done separately. It is so commonplace that I don't want to spend much time on it, but men— it is— it boards the impossible for most men to avoid very serious temptation. It's not impossible, of course not, but it boards the impossible for the kindest, finest best man under certain circumstances to avoid— not to transgress his vows of fidelity. So why put yourself in that position? That is why, frankly, I have great sympathy for actors. I really do. It's almost inconceivable that— and I've talked to household names about this, so I won't mention their names. but male actors about this. It's obviously tough for female actresses, but I'm talking specifically about males. That with all the good inclination in the world, can you be with the most gorgeous, seductive actresses in the world? You are fawned on. They are throwing themselves at you. You are acting a love scene anyway. You are thousands of miles from your home. You are away on this, on the shoot for 3 months. Away from your family, and, you know, very strong men who go and meditate over Ezekiel at night after acting may be able to do it, but for normal men with good values and good home and so on, it's virtually impossible. And so maybe one, I don't know, maybe actors should defer marriage. I don't know what the answer is. I just think I have sympathy for the issue rather than contempt for actors whose marriages keep breaking up because I don't live in that world. And it's a very tough world to maintain one's fidelity in. It just is. It's not meant— it's abnormal in its effect. It is like telling someone who has to diet they must live with the finest chef in the world for 30 years. 3 months where everyone around them is dining on the most delicious, succulent foods and they can only eat protein bars. Okay, somebody could do it. Most people wouldn't, no matter how much they wanted to lose weight. This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles.

For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now Denise, Lee, and Shelley are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends, the podcast. Each week they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's Word, and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs, and a lot of Jesus to hold it together, Circle of Friends, the podcast, is waiting for you. Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts and circle up with Point of Grace.