Tag: Through A Man’s Eyes

In Defense of Shaunti Feldhahn

Does Shaunti Feldhahn encourage men to use pornography? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, Christian author Shaunti Feldhahn posted on her Facebook page about how her and Craig Gross have negative reviews for Through A Man’s Eyes, and how apparently Shaunti is saying that it’s okay for men to watch porn and women need to accept that this is how men are. Of course, most every book will get some negative reviews and points will be misunderstood. This is one point I think there is no way someone could misunderstand her on.

My first entry into Shaunti’s books was to read For Women Only. A woman actually recommended I read it to understand my relationships with women better and this was long before my wife Allie came into my life. The next after that was For Men Only and at this point, I was not married yet so I laughed some at the thought of men reading it to get more sex, but not as much as I do now. (Wait a second. That is what it said isn’t it? Maybe I should see if I can find my copy around here somewhere….) Finally, I read Through A Man’s Eyes and thought that the book was practically a biography of my own walk.

If anything I suspect is behind this, it is that many women don’t really want to accept what was said in that last book. They don’t like the thought that most husbands out there struggle with lust. They don’t like realizing that most husbands out there really do think about sex that much. Feminism has come around with an effort to try to tame masculinity. Men are hideous and shameful just because they are men.

The story starts with a man who goes off to work and in the morning, he’s thinking about the love making he and his wife had last night. As he goes throughout the day, he is surrounded by advertisements of beautiful women and real beautiful women at the office. He works to avoid temptation all day long. Then he gets home to the one woman he can delight in and lo and behold, she wants to hide herself from him as if it would be just awful if he saw her body.

If a woman thinks this is something far from the truth, then she is just wrong. I have written about this on a post about a man’s world. I urge women to think about being on a diet and then passing through the ice cream or the candy or cookies section of the grocery store. That is the only thing I can think of comparable to what we men go through.

Why do we go through it? We go through it because we love God and we love the women in our lives. This includes those of us who are single. The only female body I delight in is my wife’s. One cannot say other women are not beautiful, but their beauty is not for me. Why would I chase after and wonder about another woman’s body? My wife’s body is blessing enough for me.

Despite saying that, I realize that is a battle I face every day. Shaunti was quite right when she spoke about it being hard on a pastor even in a church when a lady in the front row is wearing a top that is more revealing than she probably realizes. This isn’t saying women need to go around wearing burkas or something of the sort, but there does need to be a mutual understanding. Men are very visual and they need to be aware of that.

Are men for the most part visual? Yes. Does that justify it? No. As someone with Aspergers married to someone with Aspergers, I have a saying about why we do what we do because of our Aspergers. It is an explanation, but it is not a justification. Why are men tempted with porn and looking at other women? Because we are visual. Is that an explanation? Yes. Does that justify it? Not on your life.

Many men watch porn because their sexuality is so much of who they are. It is where they find their identity. If they can feel like a man and feel appealing to a woman, then they are the man. That’s the bad news. It is a constant battle. Here is the good news. Their wives can know how to best reach them. Don’t let an unknown woman on a screen have a love affair with your husband. You do it.

Nowhere in Shaunti’s writings does she endorse or approve of porn. Nowhere. It is unequivocally wrong. What is realized is why men do it, and that is part of the solution. One of the steps to knowing how to deal with it is to know why men do it to begin with.

If you are a woman condemning what you read about, try and talk to your husband and ask him if the description in the book is accurate. Of course, some men are vastly different. Sometimes it is the woman with the higher drive in a relationship. Their wives just can’t get enough of it. (And as Mark Gungor says, if you are one of those men, then I think I speak on behalf of all men when I say “We hate you.”) Many men are like this and keep in mind, Shaunti wrote this with someone who is a man who runs a ministry to help people stop using pornography.

Some of you may have critiques of Shaunti on other grounds such as her methodology and such. I cannot speak to that. Those are issues I am sure Shaunti takes seriously. This is one area there should be no misunderstanding on. I find the notion that Shaunti is fine with pornography use completely groundless. I instead happily recommend her material and think many marriages would be better if we would learn from it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Through A Man’s Eyes

What do I think of Shaunti Feldhahn and Craig Gross’s book published by Multnomah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Years ago there was a movie released called What Women Want starring Mel Gibson who after an electrical accident found that he could hear what women were thinking. Finally a man was listening. Gibson’s character changed his life drastically seeing the way women think and what effect their inner lives was having on them. Of course, this is not a big surprise since frankly, men have always had a hard time understanding women and have been looking for a good resource that would help them understand them better.

How To Understand Women

Now I think a book has come out that really gets into the lives of men. For many women, men are simple. Give them sex and they’re happy. Okay. There’s a lot of truth to that, but why is that? What’s going on in the life of your man? Why is it that he struggles so much when he walks past the Victoria’s Secret store? If he looks at another women while he’s walking down the street, does that mean he doesn’t care about you? Why should you be more deliberate about thinking about the way that you dress yourself? And of course, why does a man get involved in porn and what can you do about it?

While there is a male co-author, I found the book definitely going inside of my own head which makes me think Feldhahn really does know what we men go through. It starts with the account of a man who gets up early and is thinking about how he was up late the night before but it was worth it. He hears his wife taking a shower and goes in the bathroom just in time to see her wrap a towel around herself to his regret and how even before heading out the door he tries to “cop a feel.” At work, there is the lady who is dressing and has her outfit unbuttoned to an extent that if he looks, his mind will wander. As he drives, he sees constant advertisements on the road with women and he has to deflect his eyes and pay attention for mile upon mile. Throughout the day, he strives to think of his wife and the fun that they had before. No. This man is not a pervert. He’s not a sex addict. He’s just a simple man trying to honor God and his wife and living in a world loaded with traps to lure him away. He’s walking through a sexual minefield as it were.

We men are just drawn to beautiful women. A woman can be beautiful to us without being overt in what she does. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a struggle still, but it makes it easier. Feldhahn and Gross go into great detail as to what happens in the brains of men when they see something sexually stimulating. This will be a shock to some people, but as it turns out men and women are very different. This includes the way they respond to visual stimuli and the way they interpret sexuality. To be fair, while I thought the book was thorough on how a man interprets the signals he receives, I would have liked to have seen a little bit more on why sex is so important to a man and what a role it plays in the worldview.

Nothing said in the book is also meant to justify bad behavior on the part of men. A man is visual so watching porn is a lot more likely for him, but it is certainly not justifiable! A God-honoring man might take a second look at that woman who walked by, but that does not justify it. There are a lot of behaviors men need to work on, but a book like this can help women to better understand just what is going on in the head of the man that they married or are dating, or even in the heads of the man that they are raising, so that they can better support them in whatever battle that they’re in. (Hint: Don’t be like the woman who responded to her husband’s porn addiction by withholding sex and gaining 150 pounds.)

An important insight also is that the way to connect to a man well is through his eyes. Believe it or not wives, your husband does want to see you naked and while you might be hesitant about your own body, he wants to see you period. In fact, if you are concerned about your body, this is also why you can consider that diet and exercise to take care of your body is one of the best ways to say “I love you” to your husband. Your body is a gift that you are giving him. If you were cooking a romantic dinner for him, you wouldn’t be haphazard. You’d make sure you were doing all you could to fix it right. You should do the same with something much more lasting, your body.

Respect is also central to your man in this regard. A husband does not want respect just when you think he deserves it or has earned it. He would be foolish to love you on the same grounds, and yet for most men respect is far more central than love. Men gravitate towards respect. Remember women that you married or you’re dating a man. He is not meant to be a woman and part of his masculinity is his sex drive and his being visually oriented. If you please him with his visual orientation, you can be certain that you will build up his love for you. (Of course, being a Christian, this is to be with sex done in the confines of marriage.) Too many times women try to make their men like one of their girlfriends. It will not happen. Accept that you have a man whose primary stimulation is visual and learn to love him that way, because God wired him to be visual.

The book also does go into detail on the problem of porn and what to do if your husband or son is struggling with pornography or you think he is. It ends with a helpful FAQ that I largely think comes from Craig Gross which covers a bit of everything, including questions like “What if I find out my son has been putting ‘big boobs’ into the search engine on the internet?” Gross in this section really holds nothing back and is just blunt. The writers also stress they have plenty of other resources available at the web site menarevisual.com.

In fact, if anything, men are more visual than Feldhahn and Gross point out. A man can hear a woman speaking on the radio or on the phone and already be speculating about what she looks like. Yeah. That’s not much to go on, but a man will wonder. That’s how much this means to us and when women work with that instead of opposing it, they will find a way to get more joy out of their relationships. That means watching how you take care of yourself and allowing him to delight in you by seeing you and that you might actually have to turn the lights on sometimes when you have sex. Men want their women to be beautiful, but at the same time women don’t need to be as extremely self-conscious as many of them are. Your man just wants to see you and he wants to be wanted by you.

This is an excellent book and it will not take you long to read. I read it in about a day’s time and I found it to be quite spot on. I hope Feldhahn and Gross come out with another book together in the future explaining not just how men are visual, but what exactly sex means to a man and why.

In Christ,
Nick Peters