SEXUAL TEMPTATION AT A WORK PLACE – WHY MEN ARE VULNERABLE
By Anayo M. Nwosu
My good friends and ardent readers, please forgive me if I appear too explicit in this piece. I need to be, to enable me give effect to the points I want to convey. I am yet to see a man, a boss, who would claim that he has never been sexually attracted to a female colleague in the office. Not even priests can claim that they have not been so attracted by nuns. It is natural. It is life’s battle; a cross of some sort.
Jesus knew our human nature and had enjoined his followers in Matthew 6:13 to always ask God, praying “…lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from all evil”.
Every man in a work environment was created with same blood and hormones that flowed in the veins of Jacob, David, Sampson, Absalom and Solomon, who had multiple sex partners. It takes the grace of God for a man of natural or delegated authority to gaze at a beautiful Bathsheba or a Delilah and refuse to act like David or Sampson. Only God or morbid fear can “deliver man from all famine attractions that lead to scandals”.
What’s wrong with us men? Something is certainly wrong especially with the married ones. It is still a marvel that a happily married man would be attracted to another woman in his office. It is abominable from a religious point of view. Do not ask me if I have ever been attracted or have fallen for such temptation. I am not the subject here, even though I am a man with supervisory duties.
A deep reflection and interactions with fellow management colleagues revealed the following causative agents:
1. Sexual urge that leads to temptation is mostly unplanned. Most are accidental. Prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12:4 described sexual urge as “a traveler that comes to the man…” When a man is enveloped in this urge, his senses go on a French leave.
2. Chemically, the carbon atoms in men are unstable and would always be on the lookout for and to bind other elements. African Traditional Religion, Islam and Judaism understand this and allow men the luxury of multiple partnerships to quench their resurgent sexual urges.
3. Men, most times, see in the office environment, varieties different from what they have at home. For such men, it is very gratifying to have a different experience. A colleague once told me that even medical doctors treat nagging ailments with multi-drug therapies. One drug is not just enough.
4. Some men are moved by their quest for conquest. This evil in men pushes them to want to see their female colleagues clothe-less. Thereafter, they keep a mental list of conquered women, married or not.
5. Bosses in the office, many a times, are victims of the machinations of power hungry females subordinates who seduce their bosses to gain emotional control either for job retention or for promotion or to oppress their fellow subordinates.
6. There are some male colleagues, who though married, find love in the office. They had married women who they no longer love or those who no longer suit their current taste or meet their societal standards. Many females in the office are better trained or refined in conduct with good sense of modern dressing, male or customer care skills and are serviceable than wives at home. The ladies in the office package themselves as ecstasy and sexual bliss dispensers.
7. There are also female sex merchants in corporate environment. They dispense sex for money, favours or to make up what they miss at home. Many husbands could no longer stand up or stand erect for awhile; hence, the working wives are in perpetual search for the “power as in the old” even in the office. They are available for a randy boss or willing colleagues.
8. Being that men are moved by what they see, the penchant for women to expose some salaciously inviting parts of their bodies especially the veranda of their breasts and laps, throw many men into sexual riot. Nothing other than to see the complete picture matters to the man that’s so moved. That is why Islamic preachers prescribed hijab was a God-sent temptation preventer.
A senior colleague once told me that he, like a ram, would never tempt or coerce any lady in his office into sexual submission but, whenever he was tempted beyond resistance, that he would have no other option but to succumb.
Not all men are the same. Some men are created in the mould of Joseph who withstood Mrs Potiphar. But, how many men ignore the temptation of bewitchingly beautiful daughters of Lucifer, the chief tempter, masquerading as colleagues or subordinates in the office? I join all responsible men, mindful of the backlash of openly saying the truth, by claiming that “I resist any sexual temptation from any lady other than my wife”. That is the right thing to say.
But, are most men not guilty? Jesus raised the standard in Matthew 5:28 saying “but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.
As a man working is this love-magnetic field or environment, I feel what other men do feel especially when this epileptic tsunami of sexual temptation attempts to envelope me. When I am confronted with this kind of temptation, I plead the last paragraph of Our Lord’s Prayer that God should “lead me not into temptation but deliver me from all evils”.
The truth is that once you succumb to a sexual temptation in the office, your moral authority is gone. You could be sacked if the lid is blown open. Inappropriate sexual relationships in the office could lead to serious scandal that would destroy the career of those involved. So many male professionals with bright future have been killed by jealous partners being cheated. Nothing makes a man kill a fellow man more than a punctured ego caused by the humiliation of learning that someone else is sleeping with his wife. Embittered women also consider killing fellow women who steal their husbands when prayer fails.
I hereby congratulate the men folk who have found a way to overcome the temptations of engaging in office romance. May you never be overcome by an overwhelming lady given the fact that every man has a temptation threshold.
Men too are endangered species.
Many bosses and colleagues I know avoid this pit hole of office love by “madding their madness” outside the office.
Chief Anayo Nwosu lives and works in Lagos