I think that seeing your own wife's beauty is a zchus - if you're grateful for her, and have humility and shmiras habris - you will see her beauty. Otherwise you don't. It's no chochmah to see other women's beauty. Marry them and it will soon disappear!
So true. But really, why will it disappear? And what really is "it"?
When you say inside, "Wow, look at her", what are you really saying? What does that mean?
I believe that it means you are religious. You worship women with power - women who are beautiful to you. It is a religion, you know. It doesn't have to have a name (Lustism?), but when I observe that my mouth drops open from what I see, that my eyes follow her, and that I fantasize (use) her image, that I focus and hope (and maybe even pray!) for attachment to it...well.....isn't that worship?!
Don't we speak of desiring more than anything to be dovek - attached to Hashem and of the ziv of the Sh'chinah? Isn't it supposed to be a lust of some kind? Doesn't the RMB"M describe it as "the way a man is preoccupied with desire for his woman all day long"?
There is nothing 'anatomically' wrong with you and me, but we have a problem: we have all the right ingredients and 'parts' - and naturally use them for the wrong thing! For a broken cistern. And no amount of religiosity will break me out of it. There is no 'teshuvah' for me to 'snap out of it'....except for maybe a few minutes or days. I need more than any single act, sh'vuah, takanah, chizuk or whatever, can provide.
I need to be immersed in recovery, to hang out with recovering people, be a member of a society of recovering people, use their tools, and learn how to live a little bit differently on a daily basis in the context of my real, mundane, daily life.
Cuz my body 'knows' and tells me that the 'babe' over there, is actually a goddess. Really, not just figuratively. To me, she has power. Real power....and I need her. I feel like she will take care of me if I could only get closer. But as you put it so nicely, once we have a real relationship with them, all that disappears....because that takes them off the pedestal and they are no longer goddesses. "Uh oh...gotta find another one who really is a goddess!" And on it goes....
I am screwed up, and how. Until I recognize and admit that, there is just no starting point at all.