I did not choose to be gay, nor was I born gay. Instead, my attraction to other men was something that developed over a number of years, with many factors contributing to its development.
When I was a child, I didn't know that my father loved me. He was away at work a lot, and I didn't see that much of him, so my needs for same-sex love and affirmation were not met. Though my dad did not mean to hurt me, I felt rejected and began to shut him out emotionally.
When I was a child, I was usually on the sidelines of the boys' activities. From kindergarten to grade 12, I lived far away from school and from my classmates, which limited after-school friendships and activities. Even at school, my lack of interest and skill in sports meant I ended up playing outfield or similar positions in gym class. Because of frequent moves, I changed schools five times, staying at three of them for a year or less. It was hard to make friends when all the other kids had already known each other for several years.
In other ways, living on the periphery of life was due to sexual abuse, which in my life ranged from being sexually fondled by an adult male "friend of the family" at age five to being raped by three male peers in my early teens.
The abuse taught me to be afraid of men. It destroyed my sense of personhood and what little there was of a sense of masculinity. The message I got was that I was dirt, something to be used by others.
The abuse also taught me that the way to be close to a man is by being sexually involved with him. Puberty, when it happened in the middle of all of this, further sexualized my emotional need for love and affirmation. As far back as I can recall having sexual fantasies, they were only about men.
In earlier high school, a few of the boys--particularly one named Jimmy--often called me "fag." I understood it to be derogatory, but neither knew exactly what it meant nor that it could be used to actually describe my desires.
It was only a few months before my 19th birthday that I realized the word "homosexual" applied to my thoughts and desires. This was a great shock to me, and I became quite depressed. I was moody and slept a lot. I declined to answer when someone asked, "How are you?" On two occasions, I felt like killing myself.
In one sense I was still the same person. But in another sense, I now had this label stuck on me. I realized that the sexual thoughts in my head were different from most other men. I was no longer "just me."
I told my two closest friends what was happening. Mark replied that he already knew and that he, too, was gay. Richard and I were sitting in the kitchen when I told him, late one night, with my parents sleeping upstairs. It was a very difficult moment. I remember holding a glass clenched in my hand, shaking with fear and emotion. When I finally managed to speak, Richard wasn't surprised to hear that I was dealing with homosexuality, and was very supportive.
It was helpful to have both a friend who knew what I was going through because of being in a similar situation, and a straight friend who stood by me. Most of the friends to whom I "came out" over the years were, in fact, straight Christians, and only two of them reacted negatively. The rest of them continued to love me and to relate to me as they had before knowing.
Over the next few months, I got information from a local gay phone line and wondered whether my beliefs about what the Bible said were wrong. After much thinking, I concluded that God's intention for His creation really was for one man and one woman to be in a life-long committed relationship, and that anything else was wrong.
I did not know then whether change was possible, but decided that, even if nothing ever changed in regard to my sexuality, following Jesus was my first priority. This was a difficult decision for me--I knew that it could mean being single for the rest of my life.
That August, my family moved to London, Ontario. At university, one of the first people I met was a Christian med student named Ron, and we became friends. It took a long time for me to trust him enough to tell him why I was feeling so depressed. When I did, our friendship remained the good friendship that it had been.
Much later, Ron told me a story which he had heard in one of his classes, about an alcoholic doctor with two sons. After leaving work, this doctor would often drink enough to make the family dinner time a very unpleasant experience. His sons grew and got bigger and one day, before dinner, they tied him up in his study. His wife simply assumed he was working late. It was the first peaceful meal in a long time, and the boys used the same method on other nights.
At some point, after a neighbor noticed a light flashing on and off and discovered what was happening, the doctor went into treatment for alcoholism. The point of the story, though, was that while what the boys did worked, it didn't really solve the problem. It was a maladaptive way of coping with the situation. Somehow, this story made sense out of my own experience, and gave me a great sense of hope for dealing with my own past.
Two things happened during the years between hearing this story and starting to deal with my abuse. I learned a lot more about homosexuality, including alternate perspectives to those which were generally available. I began to see how the things that happened affected my sense of who I was, both as a person and in terms of my gender identity and sexuality.
I began to understand how my responses to what happened, like shutting out my dad when I felt rejected, further affected my sense of who I was. It later became clear that my sexual fantasies about men mirrored the unresolved abuse from my childhood, and were an attempt to reconnect with the masculinity which I lacked. Trying to get worth and masculinity from other men was, for me, a "maladaptive way of coping with the situation."
Secondly, I learned that God really loved me. I very much needed to know in my heart that I mattered to Him and that He loved me as I was. I didn't have to change first, or solve all my problems; in fact, there was nothing that I could do to get Him to love me more than He already did. Having grown up in a church, I knew in my mind that God loved me. But my experience with my earthly father, whom I felt did not love me, made it hard for me to believe in my heart that God my heavenly Father really loved me.
Part of what helped me heal in this area was to separate "my two fathers." This enabled me to love my earthly dad, to see him as a man who has many good qualities along with his shortcomings, and a man who was a better father to me than his father was to him. And I could see my heavenly Father more clearly as One who always loves me and is always there for me.
Knowing that God really loved me gave me a solid base from which to deal with the abuse of my childhood. As I worked through first one incident, then another, I began to see the lies which I had believed. The abuse told me I was good for nothing; God tells me that I am very precious and that the abuse should never have happened. The abuse told me that I was bad; God tells me that what happened is not my fault.
As I grieved the loss of my childhood and my innocence, God held me and comforted me. He also placed around me a number of friends who helped me through this painful time. One of them was a woman named Wendy, who had been my colleague for about five years. Over those years, a good friendship developed, and almost without knowing it, I came to love her. We were married in July 1991, not in the mistaken belief that marriage "cures" homosexuality, but because I truly loved her and was attracted to her. This was a great surprise to me; I hadn't expected to get married, nor had I been sexually attracted to women before.
I used to be--but am no longer--exclusively homosexual. I now experience sexual attraction to women, and find my physical relationship with Wendy very satisfying. Though I still experience some attraction to men, I expect this will continue to decrease as the abuse and its shame are worked through, and as I gain a greater sense of my masculinity.
I have to keep going to God. I need to have His truth and His light shine on the lies that I have believed for too long. He really knows who I am, and all that He created me to be, and I look forward to its continued unfolding in my life.
Additional Information:
Copyright 1997 New Direction for Life Ministries of Canada, PO Box 1078, Stn. F, Toronto, ON M4Y 2T7. All rights reserved. Used by permission. A longer version of this story is available: Here. |
