Like R' Tzvi-Meyer often says, Leiv yodeya moras nafsho. The business about going to the mikvah from seeing a woman I do not understand as any type of kedusha. Even in a vague sense.
Nu. I believe that the reason some of the yechidim of earlier generations may have gone to the mikvah after looking at a woman was not because they were perverts and were melumad in using fantasy and masturbation. Rather, I believe their motivation was something more like what the ShaLo"H hakadosh writes about in kedushas hazivug and kedushas ha'achiloh: they feared selfishness and artziyus.
They were very aware that a woman really
is just "a real person who is a woman", and their hearts did not feel that women were really sex objects to be ogled at and used for fantasy, as we often believe.
To me, coming to actually feel in our hearts that a woman is just "a real person who is a woman", is a very high madreiga in Derech Eretz for porn users and masturbaters like me and you. That is why you are here, isn't it? If not, then why come here at all? Mashcheihu l'veis hamidrash (I suggest Kollel RaMo"h
)!
If you do not understand what I mean by "a chidush that women are real people", just let me know, let me know, if you'd like.
BTW, truly coming to see
my own wife as "a real person who is a woman" rather than as the candy machine for my personal pleasure (as I hid in my heart before recovery) has been very important for us and for many other people I know. It is at the root of many peoples' sex problems in marriage. Sometimes, the good, frum wife thinks her femininity is to keep her husband's YH at bay, and the husband agrees that her femininity is for him to use when he "needs some".
Yes, they are both right. But only for people like the kadmonim, for whom olam hazeh and its tayvos were a distraction. They used their bodies to help free the mind to
maintain its focus on what they saw as their ikkar identity: their neshomah.
For any lust addict
I know, the highfalutin ideals are very beautiful - but if they were really my reality, then I would not tend to replace "b'ahavosoh tishgeh tomid" with schmutz and getting fun from my wife. In other words, for me, the starting point is admitting that I am self-centered and my body is very powerful in my true motivations, whether I care to admit that, or not. Personally, I cannot afford to fool myself into believing that I am truly a kadosh just because I break into tears occasionally while putting on my Rabbeinu Ta"m's. Every yid has that in them, I guess.
But then, I know people who
do all that, and then are on line desperately searching in the schmutz later that very afternoon at work (or worse). They have an excuse, and sometimes even blame their wives or the pretty women at their jobs for the fact that they cannot be "the k'doshim they really could be". Nu, I've been right there many times. All lies. Mikvoh is not the antidote to lies -
Truth is.
If I am missing your point, please forgive me. I am just sharing my own experience with you. Perhaps what I wrote will make no sense at all to you. It may be irrelevant and useless to you and everyone else, but b"H it is working for me and others who I know. So why be kovesh it and keep it to myself?
Sorry about the megilloh. Have a great day!