Some people out there believe that there’s nothing harmful in a little sexual fantasizing on the side. After all, if you don’t actually do anything about it, where’s the harm in that, know what I’m saying?

As you know, I’m in the habit on this blog of giving you advice on your sexual behavior. You might think that I’m about to take the more obvious path, a worthy path, the path of telling you why it’s bad to persistently fantasize about someone besides your wife. And that’s a good path, but it’s not the one I’ll be taking. Besides, it seems to me that most men who read this blog already know that.

Instead, I’d like to talk about how your sexual fantasizing is ruining everything for everyone.

Everything. For everyone.

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I’ve been taking an extended break from YouTube, where I have a channel I’ve invested considerable energy in. This channel is part of a broad hobby “community” focused on tobacco and pipes.  People actually get to know each other, or at least each other’s online personae, because they leave comments and watch each other’s videos.

Unfortunately, there’s a homosexual fetish out there focused on smoking, with cigars and pipes having a large role. Men who obsess over this sort of thing hover in the wings of what we call the “pipe community”, leaving occasional comments or making requests of people who are new to YouTube and don’t understand what’s being asked of them when they receive a special request to do a video “without any talking”.

This intersects with a common homosexual interest in hairy men. I’m large and bearded, so I get a lot of attention. This has been a background part of my YouTube life, and honestly, something I’ve had to deal with in real life since I was in college. I learn to deal with it and ignore it, but I do not like being looked at and thought of in a purely sexual way. (You know, the way we make all women live.)

Last month a young man who acted as if, and I believe actually is, he were in high school persistently pursued and sent me messages on basically all my online platforms. I had already been thinking of taking a break, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I could talk about a lot of things springing from this. About lust and obsession. About the fact that being married means nothing to these men. About how many times I’ve been told how close Knoxville or Charleston or Atlanta is.

Instead, I’m just going to say this. You guys are ruining it for me.

And don’t think it’s just the homosexual thing. I would have shut down my YouTube channel four years ago if I’d gotten that sort of attention from women, because it would have bothered my wife more. As it is, I’ll probably be back on YouTube in a few weeks.

It just got too gross. It’s gross to be looked at like that. It’s gross to be talked at like that.

I’ve gotten many obscene comments. The thing is, even a comment that could be a genuine compliment, like “just wanted to say, you have an exquisite beard” is ruined. People who know me know I would actually say  that to someone’s face. In pure unsexual admiration. But now I can’t. Some guy ruined it.

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Kimberly, my wife, just discovered Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. I’m pretty sure everyone in these United States of America already knows about this show, which has been around for a few years. Kimberly checked a couple of seasons out of the library, and she and the kids will occasionally watch an episode as part of homeschooling (yeah, that’s how homeschoolers roll). She loves it. The kids love it.

She posted about it on her blog.

Then a friend of hers kind of mentioned to her on the side, “Kim, you know that…you know…a lot of women are obsessed with this guy. It’s like a big sexual thing…”

"Yeah it is."

And it’s true. The host of the show is a chisel-chinned blue-collar demi-god. To the point where Mike Rowe is asked in an interview is there any chance you’ll stop having sex with my wife in her dreams? (btw, I courageously googled “sex mike rowe” to find the preceding link, and once again, “bears” are a common occurrence in those search results)

Guess what, ladies? You’re ruining it for her. She still watches and enjoys, but now your base fantasies taint her enjoyment. She can’t talk about it with her friends without that idea being in the background. She can’t post about it on her blog without that idea being in the background. Whether the people she’s talking to know it or not, she knows that there are people who are straight up lusting after this guy. She may not be one of those people, but their presence affects what was once an innocent, pure enjoyment.

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It’s hard to tell which comes first. Is it thinking it’s okay to privately fantasize about someone who’s not your wife, followed by thinking it’s okay to publicly talk about sexual fantasies? Or did the ubiquity of public lust and pornography make it okay to bring private fantasy into the marriage?

Regardless, we are aware that lust is no longer shameful. Men and women are not ashamed to show their lusts, in their distinctive ways, in the broadest cultural settings.

For many’s the generation (you know, since Victorian times), adults mourned the bittersweet passage out of sexual innocence. There was something beautiful and pure and magical about being able to perceive things through gender but not through sex, to be able to see something beautiful for what it was. Then you grew up, and that part of your life was over*. This becomes much more poignant, in fact, it moves into bitter, in our age.

We want to fuck everything.

That obsession ruins our eyes. And when we ruin our eyes, we ruin the world. We’re no longer able to enjoy it in all its beauty; we’re no longer able to enjoy it at all.

And if you’re always talking about your lusts, you’re ruining beauty for the rest of us.

*This is one of the reasons childhood has become sexualized. The world is sexualized, how could children and childhood escape from that?