Looking Into or Looking At?

Looking into Eyes

Let me ask this question: which is “more important”? To look into a woman’s eyes or to look at her breasts?

Looking at Breasts

Notice the interesting prepositions in that question! We look into eyes — seeing a person, a kind of entering into a relationship — while we look at breasts –maintaining an external view of them (not the person), as an impersonal object.

Why is looking into the eyes “more important”? Because there is so much greater depth and richness to be found in a person than in what is merely a body part.

Simply looking at a breast — just the breast, not the whole person — is looking at a “thing.” It doesn’t really convey anything that important about the person to which it belongs, of whom it is a part. You can look at hundreds of breasts, and you may be sexually stimulated by them, but they are only different configurations of flesh. If they affect us, it’s most commonly because we “fill in the blanks” — we attach the breasts to an image of a person. (Even for those people who are viewing pornographic images, isn’t there a preference for pictures that aren’t simply parts, but that are parts of wholes, entire persons — persons who often are trying to convey human emotions, of desire, pleasure, etc.?)

How different it is to look at my wife’s breasts, when I am looking at them as HERS! As the wonderful, voluptuous, inviting breasts that she offers me, so that I am drawn so powerfully to fondle and kiss them, in order to delight this person I love so much and to experience the delight of doing that!

The question of “looking at” someone can be complicated a bit more, because even looking into someone’s eyes can be complex. Different looks can convey very different messages (good and bad) about who we are as a person and what we are interested in. Usually, looking into the eyes is more “personal,” because somehow our eyes reveal more about who we are, as a person, and we discern in the person at whom we are looking some of her personal characteristics. When we look into the eyes of another person, we can convey — or we can observe in them — tenderness, uncertainty, joy, despair, anger, resentment, sorrow, adoration (think of a young child at the breast sometimes!), or even a kind of “sexual challenge” — an extraordinary range of our interior emotions or states of being.

This simply reminds us that what we human beings are looking for in sex is not just a “thing” that will give us sexual gratification, but a person who can give us — and receive from us — pleasure and delight and, above all, love. This is another reason why marital sex is the best, most fulfilling sex.

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