Lust for Sex as Anti-Stewardship.
One of the most bizarre, though profound, experiences I had as a 19-year-old missionary in Antananarivo, Madagascar happened one Sunday evening when my colleague and I were walking back to our accommodation. A man who was parked in the middle of an empty street in an SUV shouted over to us, asking us to come over and speak with him. He had a question for us and almost sounded like he was in distress. I very rarely heard English spoken to such a high standard in Madagascar (it being a former French colony) and he spoke with impeccable clarity. His name was Zo and he had a question for us: Should he sleep with a former mistress while under the cover of getting medicine from a late night pharmacy for his sick child? He had received a text message with an invitation earlier that evening.
“Is this guy serious?!” was my initial thought. He’s asking two Mormon missionaries if he should cheat on his wife, which was compounded by the fact that he considered using a trip to get medicine for a sick child as cover! What did he expect us to say? To make it even more interesting he swiftly stipulated that we couldn’t talk about God, Jesus, sin, hell or anything associated with religion whatsoever. “Ok, challenge accepted,” I thought.
Through further discussion I learned more about Zo, his education, successes in setting up his own business, experiences with religion in his younger years and his flawless plan to do the dirty without his wife ever finding out. He assured me that the woman who extended the invitation was very beautiful, as if to suggest that his infidelity would be worth it. He was absolutely adamant that his wife would never, ever know of his indiscretion, so any question of “what if your wife finds out?” was swiftly quashed.
Zo’s question was settled by a couple of questions that I put to him: “If it is the right thing for you to sleep with this woman, why did you ask our opinion on it in the first place? What do you care about what we think on the matter?”
I then put it to him that the reason he asked us his original question was because he knew within himself, through his conscience, that it would be wrong for him to betray his wife. His physical desires and his conscience were at war. Irrespective of his flawless cover story, and certainty that his wife would never know, he would know within himself what he’d done; he’d know it was wrong and never be comfortable with it. In short, he would have to live with it. Was this dalliance worth the price? It seemed like a high price to pay for short-term pleasure.
Zo’s face changed shape and took on an expression of defeat. “Ok, you win!” he snapped. He was obviously frustrated at his inability to reconcile his conscience with his physical desire. He told us with a look of embarrassment that he wouldn’t be visiting the woman that evening; he would get the medicine for his child and go home to his family. And that was that – question answered.
“We are free to choose our actions... but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.” – Stephen R. Covey
Lust for Sex as Anti-Stewardship
In their book, Leaders Who Lust, Barbara Kellerman and Todd Pittinsky sum up lust as follows,
“The desire is for one thing above all, and this desire is so strong, so overwhelming and overpowering that, if push comes to shove, the rest be damned.”
The authors clarify that there are other forms of lust besides the lust for sex, though the concept lends itself particularly well to that context.
If Zo had chosen to go with his lust on that Sunday evening then his dalliance could be characterised by what I call Anti-Stewardship:
Selfishness and entitlement: The opportunity for short-term pleasure was there for him to take – and he would see himself as having every right to take it!
Lack of care: Other stakeholders, most notably his wife and children, would be irrelevant to his choice – the idea being that what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them!
Myopia and short-termism: He would satisfy his desire on that particular evening, failing to consider how the betrayal of his family’s trust would remain with him long after the event.
When broken down like this, succumbing to the lust for sex doesn’t look so appealing, much less glamourous. But sometimes there are even wider implications to consider.
“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” – David O. McKay
Lust for Sex and Leadership
One of the case studies that Kellerman and Pittinsky use to illustrate lust for sex in their book is President John F. Kennedy, who is quoted as saying, “If I don’t have sex every day, I get a headache”. JFK’s dalliances put himself and several others at risk: one of his sexual partners was an East German spy and another had strong connections with the Mafia in Chicago, which he was well aware of. On this, Kellerman and Pittinsky note the following,
“In engaging with women like these the president was… putting at risk not only himself, his family, and his administration, but also the American people.”
JFK’s lust for sex provides an example of Anti-Stewardship writ large, as he put his relentless desire for short-term sexual gratification ahead of the needs of those he was trusted to lead. (As an interesting extra the authors also note that JFK was involved with an exotic dancer whose stage name was “Tempest Storm”. Sound familiar?)
Cheating in the Bedroom; Cheating in the Boardroom
After a computer hack of Ashley Madison, a dating site for people looking to have an affair, exposed the names and personal data of more than 30 million users in 2015 researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University found an interesting correlation between CEO and CFO fidelity in the bedroom and probity in the boardroom. As reported by Bloomberg, the researchers found that,
“CEOs and CFOs who had [Ashley Madison] accounts were twice as likely to have engaged in a financial misstatement or be the focus of a class action securities lawsuit between 2008 and 2014. Cheating brokers were more likely than the control group to have black marks on their records maintained by the Financial industry Regulatory Authority.”
Ashley Madison’s slogan is, “Life is Short. Have an Affair.” If that ethos is shared by those who use the site for extra-marital sex then cheating in the boardroom might not seem like such a big deal either. If life is short and, presumably, inconsequential then why not cheat? But if that really is one’s ethos then to what extent can one build genuine relationships of trust with others, especially those they lead?
Know and Adjust Your Environment
Of course, not every leader who falls foul of lust for sex does so in such a deliberate and premeditated fashion. Leadership is inherently dangerous – and those dangers extend to the additional temptations faced by those who wield power, as ably noted by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky in Leadership On the Line. Leaders are often in solitary, sometimes lonely, positions, being charged with the responsibility of meeting the needs of the many while facing the same challenges as the rest of us mere mortals. As Heifetz and Linsky write in addressing leaders in this context,
“But who’s holding you; who’s holding the holder? When you are completely exhausted from being the containing vessel, who will provide you with a place to meet your need for intimacy and release?”
This makes leaders vulnerable to seduction from those who might manipulate them to obtain power or influence themselves. If you’re reading this as a leader, be aware of your needs, your temptations and the way in which your environment might cater to those needs and perhaps present you with temptations. Adjust your environment accordingly. Sometimes its necessary to simply get out of a situation, like Joseph when tempted by Potiphar’s wife in the biblical story; or, like Odysseus who had his crew tie him to the mast of the ship to negate the seductive song of the Sirens, create an environment in which it’s not possible to fall foul of temptation in the heat of the moment. This requires self-awareness, awareness of your environment and a desire to behave, and not behave, in certain ways. Failing to respect the influence of your environment on your behaviour presents a significant risk, as does failing to ensure that your needs are met appropriately within your personal life.
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” – Henry Kissinger
Transformation is Possible
Reproduction is one of the biological purposes of life, making lust for sex a formidable force. It does not mean we’re enslaved to the never-ending pursuit of sex, though. As Norman Doidge writes in The Brain That Changes Itself, our sexual desires and preferences are plastic (meaning changeable). Many with seemingly intractable addictions to pornography whom Doidge has worked with have overcome such addictions quite easily, “once they understood the problem and how they were plastically reinforcing it.” Change is possible. If one is feeling enslaved by sexual desire then emancipation is possible. The choice really is ours. We can transform. The process through which this transformation can be achieved is called repentance, or in non-religious terms course correction.
“It’s a use-it-or-lose-it brain, even where sexual desire and love are concerned.” – Norman Doidge
The Ubiquity of Zo’s Temptation
As I think back to that conversation with Zo in Madagascar all those years ago, I’m mindful of how much the world has changed since then. Various online apps and sites have made access to gratuitous, no-strings-attached sex all the easier. One could argue that, to a greater or lesser extent, anyone with access to the internet faces the same temptation that Zo did on the Sunday evening I spoke with him.
Whether or not we succumb to that temptation is highly consequential, however; not only for ourselves, but also for others (perhaps more than we might think).
Whilst the desire for sex can be powerful, it does not inherently enslave us or take away our choice.
Ultimately, the choice is simple: Stewardship or Anti-Stewardship?
If you would like to learn how to develop the Stewardship Mindset in creating a life of purpose, meaning and fulfilment for your unique pursuit of sustainable success then drop me a line: tom@3stewardships.com.