temptation

[brightbluegirl]

Yikes. Somewhere between pizza and cake, I got a headache. Owie Owie. :(

However, I've just had a delightful hour and some chatting with folks and eating pizza and cake. And Andrew knew about it! He's known for days and days, and didn't tell me. Apparently they asked him about good cake for me. That bastard, knowing how much I like surprises. :D He even got to come to it, and that was really nice, having him there. He knows everyone anyway, since he's done work for pretty much all of them at one point or another.

It was a really nice gesture on their part!

---

I've been thinking about temptation and lack of it. In particular, as regards my relationship with Andrew.

At the wrap party godboy (a boy who talked about his faith with a capital F, who said he didn't think he could reconcile himself with all the sex in the movie, and so on and so on and so on and so on), had a couple of drinks, got naked, jumped into the hottub with a naked married woman, and grabbed her breast.

Afterwards, he talked about temptation, and that he's never going to look lustfully at another woman again, and whatnot.

Now, it occurs to me that the problem is not with finding another person attractive, but with JUMPING INTO A HOTTUB AND GRABBING SOMEONE'S BREAST.

I find people attractive, Andrew and I joke about how much I drool when I see Johnny Depp, I point out attractive people to Andrew sometimes, you know.

But we're monogamous. That same married woman at that same wrap party, came up to me and told me she thinks I'm really hot and she would like to do many naughty things to me.

And perhaps, were I single, I would have taken her up on it - she's attractive, she was wet, and naked, and I'm a sexual being...

But I didn't feel tempted, not at all. I had no problems saying "I appreciate it, but Andrew and I are happily monogamous, and he's too important to me for anything."

And so it's really interesting, the difference between godboy's situation and mine. It strikes me that those who are happy in their current situations aren't tempted by other ones, don't do things completely against what their daily belief system warrants, but those who, unconsciously or semi-consciously, or maybe even completely consciously aren't happy with what they're doing daily, seem to be easily tempted.

It just seems that temptation is actually your subconscious telling you you aren't happy to begin with.

Comments

[hukuma.livejournal.com]

I agree. I definitely find that whenever I start to find other women particularly attractive, it's a sign that things aren't gonig well in my relationship. I guess there's a parallel with crime: people who are comfortable with their standard of living aren't really tempted to rob, steal, or otherwise break the law.

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

welll...... I agree with you, except for all those laws that I don't think make sense, that are broken by myself or my friends, not because we aren't happy with our situation, but because the laws are bullshit (like the pot laws, for example).

But as far as the intent of your message, yes, I agree with you.

It raises another point - is there any internal reason (other than a lack of caring) that people hurt other people/ trash things/ litter ? My first thought is frustration, which actually goes back to the whole "unhappy with current situation" paradigm.

[hukuma.livejournal.com]

I think a large part of the litter problem is environmental. People are more likely to litter if they are in a place that's already dirty. There's some hint of the same in the problem of hurting others — if you're in a community where you don't feel that people care about or respect you, you're less likely to care about others.

This reminds me of an interesting story from "The Tipping Point": in order to transform New York subways into a clean, safe place, they decided to start by focusing on clean. They eliminated the graffiti problem by constantly repainting cars. Initially they had to do it pretty much daily, but as time progressed, the graffiti artists got discouraged and the cleanup job became much easier. As cars became cleaner, the crime rate also declined, just because peoples perception of the environment changed.

[pfloide.livejournal.com]

So this may have some bearing on my own experience in relationships - namely, I'm much more "tempted" by outside people if I'm in a strictly monogamorous relationship than a (in principle) polyamorous one... This being something like the "laws are bullshit" phenomenon - though it's more like... in a situation where the ground rules don't make emotional sense *to me*, I'm less happy, and more likely to look elsewhere for emotional or other forms of fulfillment.

The upshot being that it seems counterproductive to apply the same rules in all cases, regardless of the personality, history, inclinations, etc. of those involved, except where there's some clear reason that law HAS to be right. God-boy is trying to live inside a uniform code which somebody, somewhere, decided was right for EVERYONE, but seemingly is too strict for his own life, and evidently coming bursting out at the seams as a result. And doing things even worse than he might in a different code.

A root of the conservative/liberal debate seems to be a disagreement about facts - namely, will people do "objectively" worse things under a universally strict code, or a more flexible one? Both sides seem to be sincerely trying to create the best behaviour and have approximately similar ideas of what that is.

Funny, that.