The phrase “men are visual” is often used by women. But do we fully understand what that means?
Listen as Susie talks with researcher Shaunti Feldhahn and Pastor Craig Gross. They walk through the wiring of the male brain and offer important insights about purity, sexuality, and the daily challenges inside the world of men.
Shaunti and Craig teamed up to write a book called .
Shaunti explains why she’s so passionate about it.
“I don’t think there is any one issue that so impacts men that women are so blind too. What it means is that our men are navigating this minefield every day worried about getting their feet blown off. Men in the church want to honor God in their thought life. But we don’t realize that those temptations and traps… they hate it. They feel incredible shame about it.”
Shaunti and Craig offer us some insights:
• A man’s brain is structured entirely different from a woman’s. When he sees a woman dressed a certain way, the back center of his brain lights up and he has a gut-level desire to consume that image. By contrast, a woman who sees an attractive man uses the rational, thinking section of her brain, and that typically does not elicit a physical, sexual response.
• A man feels close to his wife when they’re being physically intimate. For him, making love increases the connection, normally more than conversation.
• If a man claims he doesn’t struggle with lust, don’t be quick to call him dishonest. He may have developed strong visual habits that guard his mind and heart.
• Women who are quick to recoil or revile men for how they are wired have probably been hurt in the past. Shaunti offers a word.
“Recognize you can trust God even when you can’t trust your husband. There is a path through this. We have seen thousands and thousands of marriages restored and men finding victory from this.”
Key Scriptures: Philippians 2:4; Matthew 5:28
Featured Songs: On Our Side by Lincoln Brewster; Glow in the Dark by Jason Gray; Drops in the Ocean by Hawk Nelson
I have to be honest and say that I unfortunately am one of the women highly offended by what you say. I’ve been supposedly ‘married’ for 17 years. My husband was addicted to porn for 13 years of that time and I only found out four years ago after he lied to me for 10 years about it after I found something on the computer.
Since then, I’ve had the hugest desire to be the only woman for him. This has gone too deep for me, and hearing what you say about men’s visual natures only makes me feel more defeated and rejected. I would never have married had I known what I would be faced with. I have been competing against every other woman on the planet since the day I met my husband and I’m sorry but I’m done. Your work seems to suggest this research is ‘amazing’. I’m sorry, it’s offensive.
After reading what you say, I have told my husband I need for us to separate. I would rather be single than inadequate. I’ve been walking this road a long time and I’m tired. I also read on the xxx3 website that it’s ok for a man to look at a woman twice?! Umm….there is a LOT of readings online that say that a second look simply is unacceptable and yet you are trying to condone it. It seems you are trying to condone a lot of things. You seem very proud of everything you’ve supposedly discovered, but you’re actually helping to destroy marriages. Mine was already destroyed and we have been trying to heal. However you have well and truly finished it off.
Hey anonymous, I am so sorry for all that you have been through, and for all your hurt. God certainly did not have pornography and feeling inadequate in mind for marriage, and its no surprise you feel tired and defeated.
I also hope to encourage you that separating may not ultimately be better. It is certainly the enemy’s plan to create disunity, to destroy the marriage God has created, and to leave you feeling how you do, and your husband trapped as well. On the contrary it is God’s will, and his plan to see you both changed and transformed. In fact, In 1 Cor 7, Paul even explains that the reason he asks us to stay married is that it may just save both you and your husband. God’s will and plan is to do an incredible work, but sometimes it doesn’t happen in the timing we want or expect. In fact, when we look back over our lives, we usually find that God’s work usually defies what we think can happen. You may be just like the Israelites standing on the shore of the Red Sea, seeing no way to escape the coming Egyptian army, and never even imagining, even dreaming, that he might part the ocean and let you walk through.
God made your husband’s visual wiring for you, and it is still God’s plan to make your husband’s wiring and desire filled up with you, and when that does happen, it will be the experience of a lifetime for you, to be in love and be so desired. That is what God desires, and the enemy is working fill force to prevent.
I know you are right to feel hurt, your husband ultimately has to make the right choices, but I just hope you have considered what might happen if you do separate, the enemy sees a victory, and you may miss out on an incredible, supernatural work of the holy spirit. My prayers for you two, whatever you decide!