also have an instinctive desire for children. I’m sure when you were younger – and perhaps still today! – you would sometimes dream of your Prince Charming coming to protect and save you, and you would hug and embrace and live happily ever after. Well, things are different for the male. Whereas women are more attracted to romantic, emotional intimacy and, as they mature, long for a baby, men are more attracted to women, and that attraction, far from remaining at the level of the romantic Prince Charming model, tends, even at a young age, to be quite anatomical. From an early age males get very curious about the workings of human intimacy, and that means they are curious about the details of the female body. You may find this a bit confronting, but it is important that you be aware of it. It actually makes sense, because it is the male who is the active principle in human procreation. He must explore and find a way into a woman’s intimacy. He must find a mate, and when he has found her, he must “know” her, to use the biblical expression. Genesis says that Adam “knew” Eve, not that Eve “knew” Adam. She will, of course, but only because Adam knew her first, that is to say, he found a way into her intimacy, and entrusted to her the most intimate part of himself, that is to say, the seed of a potential human being. That is what the Bible means by saying that a man “knows” his wife. No one else can know her that way. Only her husband has that right and privilege. This very simple truth suffices to explain why it is that men have in themselves an innate desire to get to know females better, even in the details, and the first step towards that is to see them. It also explains the innate desire young women have to be seen by males, to let themselves be found, chased, won over by them (though again, there is a big difference in the way men and women understand what is involved in the seeing). Such an innate desire must be trained so that the woman allows herself to be won, not by just any man, but by the one she loves, the one she wants to spend her life with, the one she wants to be the father of her children, him and no other. All this is of universal experience. In the tender years of childhood and adolescence, parents must protect the intimacy of their daughters, and they must train their sons to honour the female sex as one to be loved and respected, not used and violated (even in thought). This is essential so that the intimate “knowledge” of the spouse be safeguarded for marriage. Another way of expressing all this is to say that woman’s attraction to man is more 40
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