Ogling, an ingrained male trait?

bob

Respected Member
The word in question is Ogle

Ogle, verb:
  • To stare at in a lecherous manner.
  • As in, "he was ogling her breasts"

Synonyms:
  • To leer at,
  • To stare at,
  • To make eyes at,
  • To check out,

This has been on my mind a lot lately. I hope writing will help clarify this typically male characteristic within myself.

I recently relapsed after 135 days PMO free. While abstaining from PMO I wasn't concerned about MO. It was my desire that over time the frequency of MO would diminish. It was happening less frequently but it wasn't my main center of focus.

I work around lots of young people so you can imagine encounters with young women wearing revealing tops, lots of cleavage, youthful legs sprouting from short skirts and the ubiquitous yoga tights, worn possibly sans underwear. I got to the point where I created a "snap the rubber band around the wrist" technique.

Can you visualize the symbol created when someone uses both hands to touch their index fingers together and thumbs together? It looks like a heart. Based on that two hands, one heart imagery, I took my right hand, curled my index finger in towards the base of my thumb, and pressed the pressure point at the "crotch" between my index finger and the base of my thumb. With a bit of pressure, my fingernail provided enough of a feeling/pain to distract me from that moment of ogling.

The reason I mention this is it was working. It became a process of self monitoring. I would remember to give the women their modesty and look away; even if that wasn't their desired reaction. I wasn't missing anything. My one handed heart symbol reminded me that I loved my wife. These young women had nothing over the love and intimacy that I had with my wife

Before anyone thinks I am a wonderful husband I must confess. I have spent a fair share of effort to ogle women in the past. I would even attempt to position myself for opportunities of maximum ogling. I'm not perfected by a long shot. It just gave me a tool to help redirect my myself; and it was working.

Fast forward to my reboot and all interest of this attitude were gone. All ideas of redirection vanished. I didn't even realize that I had been making headway until I found myself monitoring the telegraphed movement of those women for a better look. I knew they were about to bend over, walk in front of me, change direction. I took every advantage of those opportunities. Gone was any thought of redirection. I was amazed that the transformation; negative as it was. I was back to my old patterns of negative behavior. I was on the lookout to take in that imagery. And, within my work environment, those scenarios are abundant.

After 10 days sober, no PMO or MO, I am beginning to return to the positive process of redirection. I am pleased that this again is becoming a habit. I want this to be the norm With this progress, I will succeed.

Getting back to MO. I believe, for myself, abstaining from masturbation must be part of my recovery. To be completely whole, this part of my life must be eliminated. If begin with this behavior, the desires for those additional thoughts, images, and actions will grow. Difficult as it is, I must make the new me MO free. It may take time but if I continue in this direction, success will be possible.

Not sure why I feel the need to go into this. Maybe it is the shame I feel when I read of the pain PA's cause by their addiction, maybe its a way of understanding myself. Either way, I am glad for the opportunity to share and learn from others.

Peace to all.
 

Loleekins

Active Member
Thanks for sharing, Bob. :)

I do not find that men and women are different when it comes to noticing attractive people. I notice attractive men all the time. I think the separation resides in how it's done. There seems to be a matter of difference in respect and courtesy. I notice a good looking guy with a great build and I take that in as a sexual cue. I appreciate that he's handsome, understand that I'm finding him appealing in a sexual way, meet his eyes and smile at him, shift my eyes and move on with my biz.

The men who ogle me, I find it is done in a predatory manner. There's very little in the way of appreciation. It's rather like:

tex-avery-wolf-whistle-i14.jpg


Lol
 
Bob, first off, congratulations on the 135 days. One day of bad decisions does not negate all the progress you made in those 135 days, and this fact shows in your post by how you are being objective and narrowing down the triggers and being honest with yourself and your situation. Keep up the good work. I imagine that with this new insight into how you let yourself to slip in a way that led to the relapse will be an important thing to keep in mind in the future.

Honestly, I think that our society has helped men feel from childhood that this is a male trait, and it doesn't have to be. I don't know where you are from or what you watched growing up but it is interesting to take a look at the shows you were brought up with. I am hyper vigilant of what my son watches, and I have to say, I've been horrified by the messages that are in kids programming. When you are brought up watching cartoons that depict men displaying this behavior and your parents don't address it as being a morality issue, then you are going to grow up thinking that this behavior is ok. Then you get to your adolescent stage and hormones are flying, your friends are all raised on the same cartoons and movies and so they have been conditioned in the same way. This cements it in your mind that this behavior is normal.

The thing is, WE have control over our thoughts and actions. If we have a strong sense of right v wrong then we should be able to determine that not everything that is "normal" is right or worse, an intrinsic and set trait, and it is on each of us to adjust that behavior as an adult. I have faith that every person here, unless suffering from an extreme mental disorder, has the ability to take ownership and control of their thoughts and actions. Wheter that be from the addicts side of overcoming your addiction or from the partner's side of overcoming the betrayal. Self control is a muscle that needs to be exersized to gain the strength needed to take command of your faculties.
 

Steam rolled

Active Member
Thank you so much for yout post it means more than you know to hear the other side.
As for you 135 days * high five *
But question do you know what triggered you to Relapase and will be working on that? Im not asking to know what. ( unless you want to or it would help)
But asking that you are aware of any trigger that may have played a role in your slip.

Now that my SO has been clean so long he notices the behavior of men who oggle, he will actually almost race me to a seat say in a restaunt if he see's men around that as he says will be staring and disrespecting me. Its like men also have this radar and can sence it.
I to can sence it now that I know so much from reading and understanding that its worse than I
Even thought
Its a terrible feeling to be stared at while trying to relax and or just go some where and look good and feel sexy for my SO and self. I understand a look but a PA glare NO dont want.
Like I have said to someone before - I am not here for your entertainment.

Another incident  - I have been video taped and pics taken while working ( more than once)as I do a manly job.
O.k i understand Wow look at that small girl doing a job mostly men do.
But this ome time i " noticed "  continued on and on video taping I felt it needed attention as it became creepy.
I yelled across the road stop taping me or ill call your supervisor.
Why is it o.k for a man to work with no shirt on and not be bothered but I have a tank top on and shorts beacuse it 100 degrees it doesnt mean im asking for a aduience or there to tease anyone.
Im there to work even harder than most standing around watching me and not die of heat exhastion just like the men are with there shirts off.

I will say i know of many girls who do want that attention and also being a tease while making fun of men, and its just so easy to do.
And then they go home  to there husband.
Not with a care in the world about the oogler.
Just Fun to them watching men look foolish. Again easy.
Its Not cool to me when girls do that and want no part of it.
Which has lead myself and my SO to be some what loners.

Men need to be men is there that much time or worth all this wastelss oogling ,watching porn on a phone threw out the day, looking at other woman and getting sexually aroused.
Its called work and there is much more productive things to do with your time but you wont find it wasting it on all that garbage.

Im married i have a SO i dont need to get arosed by anyone else nor do i want to.

Like loeekin said there is a difference and there is.

I love men as friends and have many but really starting to distance even conversation with most as I have lost so much trust in people threw all this.
And it sucks!
 

Emerald Blue

Well-Known Member
I was ogled from the age puberty not only by boys but by adult men including school teachers and neighbors who knew exactly how old I was. I've seen a guy watch me and masturbate. I've been followed. I've had all the cat calls and whistling, and all the rest. I did not welcome the attention. I found it threatening. I felt that I was treated like a dehumanised object with no right to privacy. All without my consent.

At the same time we are taught by our culture that a woman's value depends on how she looks and even more so than ever in our increasingly sexualised and image-saturated culture. It's also a culture where it has become acceptable for men to openly treat women as sex objects or fantasy objects. Such attitudes are so commonplace that most men rarely question it. Porn fuels very negative attitudes towards women, it makes it OK to leer and ogle. I see it all the time and it's so fucking obvious. Just because porn is available online 24/7 it doesn't mean that any and every woman in the real world is also available to feed male fantasies. It's still as unwelcome and threatening as it ever was. Women are still dealing with the age old fears about their personal safety.

Just out of interest, how many of us (the female partners) have experienced sexual harassment and/or sexual assault? And I bet you it's every one of us, and I bet you a fair few will have experienced this on multiple occasions. I've experienced several physical sexual assaults, I've been touched inappropriately without my consent, I've had a man expose himself to me, I've had a man watch me and masturbate, I've been followed, I've had men making lewd comments to me or deliberately in earshot, and that's not including the gauntlet of cat calls and unwanted attention that is just part of the deal of being a woman. I do not believe that my experiences are atypical.

If men genuinely respected women they would treat every woman with the same respect they'd show to their mother, or sister, or daughter, or niece. Don't believe that ogling and having overtly sexual thoughts about a woman is showing her "respect". It's not. It's objectifying. If you are only interested in her physical appearance or her body parts, what else can it possibly be?

There are men who believe that women are "asking for it" by the way they dress. We're all aware of this attitude in regard to rape and most right-thinking people would say that no woman "deserves" to be raped because of what she wears, but you also have ask than question in respect of leering and ogling.

As I said previously, women are valued on how they look and so feel under pressure to look a certain way. We are subtly taught that male attention and approval is valuable commodity yet we live in fear of that attention becoming a threat to our physical safety.

As for women looking at men, yes of course I will notice a handsome man or a fine physique but that's as far as it goes. I don't immediately think "sex". It's more of an aesthetic appreciation that goes no further.
 

Steam rolled

Active Member
I can relate to everything you said.

but have you noticed its got worse more like  normal behavior and more inappropriate
Trying to be sneaky about peeking at girls is a thing of the past it seems.

I can spot a PA and so can my SO, as he puts that dude got problems!
 

bob

Respected Member
Thank you all for your comments,

I understand the frustration about being in this situation. As a man I am embarrassed that females are placed into this situation. It has to feel creepy and unsafe. My point was, understandably naive, is, that I was able to recognize a distinct change in my behavior related to PMO absence. I came to the process of change my behavior, turning away, so I wouldn't ogle. this came about slowly during my reboot process. Before that, I didn't see myself as a creeper. I looked when it was in front of me but... Oh who am I fooling. I am not sure I can honestly say how I was perceived. I do know that I am generally considered a kind person so I don't see myself as the lecherous type. But, honestly,  I can't be the judge.

My point is that I noticed a distinct change in my actions. When I relapsed, I returned to a behavior that was unacceptable. The inverse was slow to evolve. When I started my reboot and started to change my behavior and it was a slow change, something I didn't readily notice. When I relapsed the change was immediate. The difficulty in not looking was noticeable. It wasn't ever confrontational. When the woman in yoga tights walked right in front of me, I had a hard time looking away. Even when, a week previously, I was able to consciously distract myself.

Not sure what that tells me except it is another example of how insidious this pull of porn is to the human mind.
 

Objectified1

Active Member
Porn teaches men that women are here for their sexual gratification. It teaches us all, anyone who consumes it, that women are merely objects. Not people to interact with or humans but objects to ogle. Of course that will come out as you go about your day. Men who watch porn subconciously view women as a collection of body parts that give them pleasure. Women who dress to show off their body parts encourage This view point. Of course this doesn't excuse the man. Just because I CAN eat all the chocolate I want doesn't mean I should. I shouldn't have to have my hands in cuffs to do the right thing. However, if I'm not supposed to eat choloafe and it is laying around everywhere and all I have to do it look in its direction to consume it, it's pretty tough to resist stealing some of that chocolate  here and there. I feel though, like you said, the more I resist, the better I would get. It is sad how our society created and contributes to this problem on both ends.
 

Emerald Blue

Well-Known Member
I agree, Objectified1. I believe porn trains men to scan their environment and pick out a woman and view her in the same way as if he was seeking out the next hot porn video. The fact is, as women we are taught that our value depends on how well we can attract and hold the male gaze. I am horrified, yes HORRIFIED, by the realisation that my partner was looking at women in this way, looking at them as if for their "click" potential. So he was looking at very young women in the real world in a way that he wouldn't have done previously. He would also be critical of women's appearances if they were on TV or whatever, if they were over a certain age - older than the typical porn age woman, like actresses over 40. Even if they were good-looking and very attractive women in most people's eyes. That's what porn does to many men, they think they have the right to judge. But what happens when you're married to a man like that? What is that telling me?

I know that there are men out there who appreciate the beauty of a mature women and sometimes I really wish I could be with a man like that, not a porn addict with all that rot inside his head. The shocking thing was that after he quit porn he realised what he had all along. I'm sure that for him he has had to question his attitudes and beliefs relating to his porn addiction, but I'm not sure he realises how distorted his thinking has become. When he responds to a cue he believes it to be "normal" but I believe that his normal male responses have been conditioned by years of porn use to respond in a porn-like train of thought. If there was a mouse button in the real world that would make a woman display herself explicitly before his eyes he would have been clicking on it.
 
Just came across this article and thought it may be helpful to men here that are rebooting and struggling with oogling.

http://compulsionsolutions.com/can-looking-be-a-symptom-of-sex-addiction-by-james-gallegos-m-a/
 

jjhan12

Member
Can someone give me an example of ogling?

Is it bad to look someone who you find intresting? I mean not to stare but to observe.
I notice women daily which i consider good looking. Mostly i look them at their eyes and smile. Most of them smile back and then look away, those who look longer i say hello or hi. I don't think that i'm creepy i just like to make contact with other people, men also.
 

Objectified1

Active Member
When you are walking somewhere and a man is obviously looking your body up and down that's ogling. When you have to turn around to look at her behind, that's ogling. When you are too Ingrossed in her breasts to see her disgusted look, that's ogling. When you notice a women purely on her physical and then proceed to have your fill of her visually. Just because someone is attractive does not mean our thoughts should go to the sexual. If they do, there's most likely ogling and objectification taking place. Every attractive women is not a vessel for sexual gratification.
 

Erasmus_xlt

Active Member
I saw something that fit this recently:. The first 3 seconds are awareness of your surroundings.  Anything longer than that is feeding your carnal nature.
 

jjhan12

Member
It's hard to admit that i do ogle sometimes. I have thought this in last days. I can now recognize this behavior in me and i can cut it off immediately.
 

balanced

Active Member
I posted this a short time ago, maybe it will help in this discussion...

balanced said:
My focus at the moment is eliminating the ogling behavior that I developed over the past couple decades. I didn't realize just how much ogling of women I was doing until I really dug into all the facets of my porn addiction behaviors. Ogling, in my view, is seeking porn substitutes in the day-to-day world, no different that looking for it online or in the daily catalog that arrives in the mail.

My reading and my work with my therapist have given me several tools that I have found helpful in the daily moments when I encounter an attractive woman. I thought I'd share a few in the hope that they might also help someone else...

First, when you begin to scan or ogle, say to yourself "Not that guy..." This is a great reminder that you don't want to be that creepy dude checking out the women all the time.

If you're married or have a significant other to whom you are committed, you can say to yourself "Instead of staring at that woman I should be spending this energy thinking about and appreciating my wife/girlfriend..."

Sometime a "rule" can be helpful, like a 2-second rule...you only get to look for two seconds then have to move on. And pat yourself on the back when you do.

If you're religious, you might use this version of the same technique. When you see an attractive woman, you remind yourself that the first look is on God, and anything after that is on you...

A very helpful mental exercise early on is to add details to the visual, that is, consider that the woman is someone's daughter, or wife, or girlfriend, and therefore is not "yours" to stare at. Additionally, you can create a story in your head that will help you move on, like "Yeah, but I bet she's (fill in the blank -- with an unattractive personality trait or physical characteristic you can't see)"

I found it is helpful to have tools like these to use when you are first trying to break the ogling/staring habit. I have made great progress using each of these at some point, but it's up to each guy to figure out which will have the impact of breaking his stare. And, like so many of the facets of this addiction, I now know that gaining control of my eyes not only gives me a sense of accomplishment but it also makes me more present to my wife right beside me.

The work is soooooo worth it.
 

balanced

Active Member
And to answer the question, in my opinion, ogling is a behavior, a behavior is learned and ingrained, and therefore can be modified. We have learned to control other deeply ingrained, some might say instinctive, behaviors like anger and fear, proving that we can modify, control and redirect even the most deeply hardwired behaviors.

To say it is a trait, implying that we cannot control it or change it, diminishes our humanity and our potential and human beings.
 

Gracie

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
I don't think it is an ingrained male trait.  I think it is a taught and encouraged male trait.  Just like masturbation to porn. 

Boys are encouraged to look at girls when they are young.  Look at her isn't she cute.  Then as they get older it becomes Look at her shape, tits, legs, butt etc.  and this is still at a young age.  Watching movies, tv the men in the movies are leerers.  They never get called out for what they are doing.  In fact it is laughed about.  Boys are taught that masturbation is ok.  Girls are taught that it is not ok.  And boys can masturbate without having naked pictures or movies there to look at.  But they are taught hey that's okay too.  And encouraged by others to do it that way. 

It can be stopped.  My husband has.  But I told him that he reminded me of the men that used to make comments and stare at me when I was young.  "A dirty old man"  Some men do that now still.  UGH!
 
N

NwaltRed

Guest
There seems to be a lot of confusion here? Or perhaps just double standards?
Do you folks really believe it is the best place for this, are you here to offer support or to "take men down a peg" as it were?

Alright let's start with the "ogling", right from the start we have someone trying to justify female behavior while simultaneously bashing the evil "male gaze". No, we as men do not just see a flying pair of tits and an ass  ::) We do recognize that you are a human being with thoughts, emotions etc. That said, just like the women folk here trying desperately to justify their own behavior as pure, we do appreciate a woman's sexuality as yet another trait that makes women (generally) wonderful.
You have no idea what we as men are actually thinking, anymore than we know what you as a woman are thinking. So perhaps pony up some facts rather than feelz it you want to try to paint all men as mindless horndogs.

 
 
N

NwaltRed

Guest
Johan said:
Can someone give me an example of ogling?

Is it bad to look someone who you find intresting? I mean not to stare but to observe.
I notice women daily which i consider good looking. Mostly i look them at their eyes and smile. Most of them smile back and then look away, those who look longer i say hello or hi. I don't think that i'm creepy i just like to make contact with other people, men also.

My theory is that some women find men looking at other parts of their body (aside from their face) offensive, and it therefore falls under the category of "oggling". Really I'm not sure what difference it makes, why is appreciating a pair of breasts any worse than appreciating a symmetrical face? Until you know the person you are "oggling" on an emotional/social level, you are going to be attracted to them by visual cues.

Nothing wrong with any of that. The majority of men and women understand that it is okay to find someone visual appealing. The majority of men and women realize that their being "offended" is their problem, and of little concern to society as a whole.
 
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