This means you are confident in your self-worth and in your womanhood. Women shouldn't feel jealous if their man looks at another woman. Jealousy is a sin.
14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
(James 3:14-16 ESV)
This would also have to ensure that the issue of jealousy isn't one-sided. I've known lots of guys who were jealous over their women to extremely unhealthy extents, like not allowing them to work, etc. -- not so much because they wanted to be the providers, but more out of fear that his woman would have any kind of contact with other men.
I remember Minnie Pearl talking about her uncle Nabob. Uncle Nabob liked to go down to Atlantic City and look at all the dresses all the women almost had on.
His wife wasn't too happy about this. Uncle Nabob retorted, "Just cause I'm on a diet, don't mean I can't look at the menu!"
Now I know that was just a comedy routine, but it got me thinking... When I look at the menu and imagine all those delicious dishes, I start getting more hungry. If I was on a diet and couldn't eat any of them, looking at the menu would cause one of two things - torturing myself or breaking my diet.
I'm not much for looking at the menu as it is, even as a single guy. Gravity is the great equalizer, and all the stuff you can see will start sagging all too soon. My interest in a lady is more about "does she cuss out the person in the McDonald's drive through window?" So it wouldn't really be an issue for me.
But I know one thing. If we got married and SHE was looking hard at other guys, it would make me feel like I was not enough.
I know this might be an unpopular answer, but I have to agree to Lynx.
Now, if it's a case where you're out and about, like on date night, and you both see a stunning woman -- shoot, I'd be staring at her, too. But it's because I'd be wishing I looked like her and not me. And if it happened often that my guy was looking at other women, I wouldn't be able to stay in that relationship.
I would also want to know how far his extent of looking at beautiful women went -- was he looking at them all the time? Just in public? In private? In pictures? In videos on his phone?
When I was younger, I accepted what I was told. "Boys will be boys," "God made men visual so they're supposed to appreciate beautiful women," etc. But it can depend on how far it extends. In my younger days, the guys I was around were collecting porn (in print and video, as this was long before phones, and the internet was just starting to boom.) I put up with it then.
I couldn't do it now. It would wreak havoc on my self-esteem. I'd be trying to diet and exercise down to nothing to try to be "good enough" for him. And I don't handle one-sided standards very well. I've often talked about the alcoholic boyfriend I had years ago. He was collecting printed Asian porn (he had it laying out openly in his room), and I wondered if he was just dating me to fulfill some sort of fetish. He didn't care about how much it bothered me (or about anything else that bothered me, really.)
I don't tolerate someone walking over me very well -- I'll take for so long, but eventually... Having been around him a while and knowing him very well, I knew he was very insecure about his nose. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it, but he thought he was a great-looking guy -- except for his nose.
At the time, Ralph Lauren was running a lot of ads featuring male models with perfect Roman noses. The more this boyfriend disregarded my feelings (all while claiming to be a Christian,) the more my inner anger grew -- and fortunately, I got out before things deteriorated any further.
If I had stayed, there would have come a day when he would have come out to his car -- and the inside of it would have been plastered with pictures of men, fully clothed -- but with societally "perfect" noses and notes such as, "Now THIS is a HOT nose!!" written all over them. I don't handle having my feelings blatantly ignored very well for very long unless I absolutely have to (like at a job.)
The other thing is that if it was a porn issue -- I certainly can't claim to be a saint but I do not like being around those things at all. My test was more in written words rather than images -- but to be honest, even after trying to read a couple of books like that when I was young and curious, I found them to be boring, repetitive, and so unrealistic that I just lost interest.
I do think the reason why I try to steer clear of things like that is because talking to people who have histories of traumatic sexual abuse and seems to be part of my calling.
In order to try to be of any help to people who have gone through this at all, I have to constantly work at trying to keep the guard rails of right and wrong distinct in my mind.
Porn smashes right through any and all guard rails, so if I can help it, I don't want to be around those things. Another time, I went to go pick up a guy I was dating (who knew the Bible so well, I'd be willing to pit against a good number of regulars in the BDF,) and he had a porn video running on his VCR.
I'm not thinking, "Oooohhh, that's hot," when I see glimpses of those things.
Rather, I'd be thinking, "Yeah, those are the kinds of things my co-worker's stepdad was showing him/her as a kid, all the while telling him/her that he/she was 'special'" -- and it truly makes me feel repulsed.
Like I said, I understand that a lot of people won't agree with my stance -- but it wasn't that I didn't try to tolerate those things in relationships. I just found out that trying to "be understanding" was destroying me.
And I'd personally rather stay single than have to deal with that again.
