Those Roving Eye's

You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your
neighbor's wife or his male servant or female servant or his ox or
his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Exodus 20:17

Why are so many people discontented with their mates? Perhaps one
reason is they play the comparison game.

Picture a typical morning. A man gets up and starts his day. As he
rolls down the freeway, he drives by two or three beautiful women who
beckon seductively from billboards. One is dressed in slinky black
velvet; the others aren't dressed in much at all.

Hubby walks into his office building and inhales a blend of
"Obsession," "Passion" and "Giorgio Red" as he rides in an elevator
full of pretty secretaries, accountants and lawyers. He greets his
own attractive secretary, who is beautifully dressed, with perfect
hairdo and flawless makeup.

That evening our hero arrives home and flips on the tube to relax.
There it is-a rerun of his favorite James Bond movie. More beautiful
women falling into bed with 007. Then up pops a commercial selling
beer, cars or shampoo-with more perfectly shaped young things crowned
with glistening hair, perfect white teeth and flawless skin.

Our twentieth-century warrior glances over at his harried wife. She
is cooking dinner as two screaming kids with runny noses cling to her
legs like small anchors. More than one hair is definitely out of
place, the baby has spit food on her blouse and she smells more like
broccoli than perfume. And hubby begins to think, What's happened
here? How did I end up with this?

Of course it's easy to reverse this picture. The wife may make the
same kind of comparisons.

The basic problem with comparisons is that they are based on fantasy
games played from a distance. The beautiful people on TV don't look
quite that good up close, particularly at 6:00 A.M. It's always easy
to think the grass is greener on the other guy's lawn, until you look
closely and see all the dandelions and crabgrass.