Temptation Bait

Eric and Joyce have been married for less than a year and already trouble is brewing. Eric is gregarious and makes friends easily but some of those friends are women, and Joyce wants Eric to drop them.

Eric doesn’t understand what the big deal is. He is not romantically interested in his women friends. They’re just friends. Just like the women he meets on Facebook. They’re just people to chat with. He hates Joyce’s possessiveness and can’t understand it. He is also baffled by her objection to his commenting on how other women look. Sometimes he makes jokes about their immodest clothing or their body size. It offends Joyce that he even notices.

Joyce is fed up with Eric’s behavior and takes it personally. Joyce assumes that Eric is not satisfied with her and after repeated arguing, she’s near to calling it quits.

As I saw it, there were two problems. One had to do with Eric’s need for validation from women other than his wife. That was a topic we needed to explore. What was Eric getting from his contact with other women that was so vital he would risk his marriage for it? Or, is Joyce’s jealousy itself the payoff, despite Eric’s protestations that he “hates” her jealousy and feels that she is overreacting. He says he truly loves only her.

After talking to them, I found out that both Joyce and Eric had been cheated on in previous marriages, meaning they both suffered betrayal in the past. This adds even more to the mix.

The second problem they have, the one I want to discuss here, is that Joyce and Eric are trying to have a monogamous marriage in a secular society that offers little support and no guidelines. In fact, secular society is rife with opportunities to destroy the holiness of marriage.

Remember when Vice President Mike Pence stated that he would never have lunch alone with a woman and that he doesn’t attend parties that serve alcohol without his wife by his side? A smart man, wouldn’t you say? You would be wrong, according to wide public reaction. Mike Pence was ridiculed for weeks and considered to be a man who can’t be trusted around women because he views them not as “equals” but as objects to take advantage of. He was also seen as a real goody-goody. C’mon, Mike, lighten up!

Those of us who know better, who are honest with ourselves, commend him. But it seems we are in the minority.  Why is that so?

Secular society rejects good boundaries and won’t face the fact that extramarital affairs don’t “just happen”. Even though there are psychological reasons for instigating an illicit relationship, it would never amount to anything if people observed the Torah’s laws between men and women.

G-d gave us boundaries because as our Creator, He knows exactly how our minds work and what we’re capable of doing.

He also has compassion on us and understands how easy it is to fall into something we shouldn’t. He knows, even with a happy marriage, that other people can still be appealing to us. However, a happy marriage means that someone else’s charm is irrelevant.

Eric insists he is not looking for an extramarital affair, but he doesn’t realize he is playing with fire. The Torah does not hold by platonic relationships between men and women. This is not to say you can’t be polite or friendly to the opposite sex. But it does mean you are obligated to conduct yourself according to the laws G-d gave us, for your sake and the sake of others, especially your spouse. Platonic relationships can easily tip into more than that, given the “right” set of circumstances.

We refer to G-d’s laws as fences that protect us from risky situations. Observant Jewish men, for example, do not gaze at other women and have zero contact with females outside their immediate families. They will not shake a female colleague’s hand or peck the cheek of a family friend, nor hug his wife’s female cousin or a newly engaged niece.  A G-d-fearing man will also not hold long conversations with another man’s wife and will not allow himself to be alone in a room with a female student or secretary. This massively cuts down the likelihood of something happening that can lead to utter destruction.

So many people are attractive, interesting, and charismatic that it would be easy to fall in love with hundreds of people throughout a lifetime. Yet we commit to just one, and use that devotion to better ourselves, learn about love, raise a family and get closer to Hashem. We have important work to accomplish in this world and it isn’t having numerous liaisons and romantic entanglements. High school was over a long time ago.

Eric has to learn to curb his behavior, to understand his compulsive need for female attention and what it’s doing to his marriage. But he also has to face facts, that he is not smarter than G-d. He claims that “nothing” will happen. Well guess what, Eric, it already did. Your wife is now suffering from heart fracture and if you aren’t careful it will become a terminal condition.