A Word About "Heterophobia"

But what about so-called "internalized homophobia," the buzzword of the day that is supposed to explain homosexual guilt and why people like us choose to change [from "gay" to straight]? Internalized homophobia is a tortured explanation at best. On the contrary, we felt exactly the opposite of fear or revulsion of homosexuality: we felt an intense attraction drawing us to it. That can hardly be described as phobic.

On closer examination, we discovered where our true fears lay. It wasn't homosexuals and homosexuality that we feared, but just the opposite: we were afraid of heterosexual men, heterosexual masculinity, male authority figures and male power. If anything, we were "heterophobic," not homophobic.

Unknowingly, unintentionally, we had constructed a psychological gulf between ourselves and the heterosexual male world. Yet, as males, we needed to belong to the world of men. To be mentored by them. To be affirmed by other men. To love and be loved by them. Although we feared men, we pined for their acceptance. We envied the confidence and masculinity that appeared to come so easily to them. And as we grew, envy turned to lust. Watching men from afar, wanting to be like them, wanting to be included, they became the objects of our desire.

From the far side of the gulf we had constructed, we could never grow out of homosexuality. Gay activists and gay-affirmative therapists would tell us that our true place was in fact on this side of the gulf, that it was a good place to be. If that is true for others, it certainly wasn't for us. We wanted something more. We wanted to face our fears, heal our underlying problems, and become the men we felt God wanted us to be. We didn't want to be affirmed as gay. We wanted to be affirmed as men. We didn't want to kill our conscience. We wanted to heal the hidden problems that our inner voice was calling us to heal.

So our quest became to discover and uncover the pain underlying the symptoms. Most commonly, we recognized within ourselves many of the following decades-old issues we had long avoided or run from. Not all of us experienced all of these, but surprisingly many of us experienced quite a few of them:

Unhealed Wounds from Childhood and Youth

As we began our "inward journey" of healing we often found we were carrying around deep emotional pain from childhood or youth - although many of us had became fairly adept at ignoring it, running from it or covering it up. (Whether the offenses that caused the childhood pain were real or perceived was irrelevant; our perception was our reality.) Usually, the pain had to do with our feeling unloved or unwanted - or at least, not loved or wanted enough. The pain often included "father hunger," "mother enmeshment," peer rejection, poor "gender esteem" and, with disproportionate frequency (compared to the general population), childhood sexual abuse or premature exposure to sexual experience.

When this occurred, it was inevitably at the hands of other males, causing untold confusion between love and abuse, male and female. Time alone could never really heal these kinds of deep wounds without our going back to face them, acknowledge them, grieve them, release our legitimate anger over them, take steps to repair the damage they had caused us (to the extent we could), and finally, to forgive and move on.

Feelings of Masculine Deficiency

Somehow, even as boys or young teenagers, we felt like we were never "man enough." We felt like we didn't live up to the masculine ideal. We saw ourselves as too fat or too skinny, too short or too awkward, not athletic enough or tough or strong or good-looking enough - or whatever other qualities we admired in other males but judged to be lacking in ourselves. It was more than low self-esteem, it was low gender esteem - a deficiency in our core sense of gender upon which our whole self image is built. Other males just seemed naturally masculine, but masculinity never came naturally to us. We aspired to it but were mystified by how to achieve it. Among other males, we felt different and lonely.

Idolization of Other Males and Maleness

Feeling deficient as males, we pined to be accepted and affirmed by others, especially those whose masculinity we admired most. We began to idolize the qualities in other males we judged to be lacking in ourselves. Idolizing them widened the gulf we imagined between ourselves and so-called "real men," the Adonis-gods of our fantasies. In idolizing them, we increased our sense of our own masculine deficiency. It also de-humanized the men we idolized, putting them on a pedestal that deified them and made them unapproachable.

Fear of Men

At the same time we idolized certain male traits or maleness generally, many of us came to fear other boys and men. Born with unusually sensitive and gentle personalities, we found it was easy for many of us to feel different from and rejected by our more rough-and-tumble peers growing up. We came to fear their taunts and felt like we could never belong. Many of us feared the sports field and felt like we could never compete. Many of us felt rejected by our fathers and feared that we could never measure up or would never really matter to them.

In some ways, we even feared our own maleness, confused by mixed messages from male role models (both real and cinematic), women, peers and societal feminism about what it means to be a man, or even whether manhood was good or evil. We were afraid to open our hearts to other men, to be truly seen, to ask for help. We were afraid to trust men, afraid that they would dismisss or deride us, wouldn't keep confidences, wouldn't keep their word, or wouldn't really care. Some of us felt anxiety or even panic just being around men, getting near a ball field with them, or attempting to have a heart-to-heart with them. And fearing them, we ran from them.

Estrangement from Men and Disassociation from Maleness

Our fear and hurt at feeling rejected by the male world often led us to disassociate ourselves from the masculine - the very thing we desired most. These feelings also led us to prejudice as some of us began consciously or subconsciously to deride men as inferior... "Neanderthal" ...less "evolved." Often, we succumbed to the common psychological phenomenon of being most critical of what we most envied. Or most feared.

Some of us began to distance ourselves from other males, male interests and masculinity by consciously or subconsciously taking on more feminine traits, interests or mannerisms. (We often saw this in the gay community as deliberate effeminacy and "camp," where gays sometimes took it to such an extreme they even referred to each other as "she" or "girlfriend.")

But where did that leave us, as males ourselves? It left us in a Never-Never Land of gender confusion, not fully masculine but not really feminine either. We had disassociated not just from individual men we feared would hurt us, but from the entire heterosexual male world. Some of us even detached from our very masculinity as something shameful and inferior.

Over-Identification with the Feminine

Feeling alienated from the male world, we often found comfort in female companionship, especially as boys or teenagers. Some of us labeled women and femininity as superior to men and masculinity because we perceived females as more sensitive, accepting and loving. They felt "safer" to be with and to expose our painful emotions to. Instead of ridiculing our sensitive natures, they appreciated them. They didn't expect us to prove we were "man enough," even while we were still just boys. Many of us learned to identify with women and girls as our sisters, our buddies and, inadvertently, even our role models. Our sense of girls as the "same sex" and boys as the "opposite" sex was reinforced.

Over-Sensitivity

Almost all of us had an innate sensitivity and emotional intensity that we learned could be both a blessing and a curse. (To whatever extent biology may contribute to homosexuality, this is probably where biology most effected our homosexual struggle.)

On the one hand, our sensitivity caused us to be more loving, gentle, kind and oftentimes spiritually inclined than average. On the other hand, these were some of the very traits that caused girls to welcome us into their inner circles, Moms to hold onto us more protectively, Dads to distance themselves from us, and our rough-and-tumble peers to reject us. Perhaps even more problematic, it created within us a thin-skinned susceptibility to feeling hurt and rejected, thus magnifying many times over whatever actual rejection and offense we might have received at the hands of others. Our perception became our reality.

Father Hunger

In our own experience, and from the experience of the many gay men we have known, it seems very rare for a man who struggles with homosexuality to feel that he was sufficiently loved, affirmed and mentored by his father growing up, or that he identified with his father as a male role model. In fact, oftentimes the father-son relationship is marked by either actual or perceived abandonment, extended absence, hostility or disinterest (a form of abandonment).

Like all human experience, this is not universal, and sometimes the father-son relationship doesn't seem to be a problem. Rather, the relationship with brothers or male peers or male abusers may have created deep wounding. In any case, it is a common experience for many of us to have felt a deep longing to be held, to be loved by a father figure, to be mentored into the world of men and to have our masculine natures affirmed by our male peers, "elders" and mentors. On the other hand, we have never known a single case where a man who struggles with unwanted homosexual feelings was not emotionally estranged from or wounded in his relationships with other men or the male world.

"Mother Enmeshment"

Even as we perceived our fathers as abandoning, ignoring or being hostile toward us, it was a common experience for us to over-identify with or become overly dependent on our mothers. Oftentimes, we never fully cut the "apron strings" that attached our identity to hers. Mom often became our confidant and mentor instead of Dad, but Mom could never show us how to act and think like a man. So it was common for us to view maleness from a woman's perspective instead of a man's. We inadvertently adopted a woman's view of the world. The gulf between us and the world of men was widened and reinforced.

Shame, Secrecy and Self Loathing

All of these factors created within us a deep sense of shame and self loathing. This wasn't about so-called "internalized homophobia"; most of us felt shame long before we felt homosexual. Homosexuality didn't create shame; shame created homosexuality - or at least it was a significant contributor. Homosexual desire emerged as a way to respond to our shame: "Since I can't feel man enough or good enough or loved enough within myself, perhaps another man can love me and want me and make me feel manly."

Sometimes acting on our homosexual desires brought relief from shame, but it often turned out to be fleeting. Consumed by shame, we hid our secret, certain that if others "really knew us," they would reject us with disgust and disdain. Secrecy fed the shame, self-loathing and isolation.

Isolation and Loneliness

Fearing men, feeling like we could never measure up, being overly sensitive and easily hurt, we built walls around ourselves to protect ourselves from further hurt. "They can't hurt me if I reject them first," we told ourselves, intuitively. And in so doing, we unknowingly increased the isolation and detachment from the very relationships and healing we so desperately needed. Reparative therapists call this "defensive detachment" - defending against anticipated rejection and hurt by detaching or distancing ourselves preemptively.

Unhealthy Relationships

With all the brokenness we describe here, it is not surprising that many of us were drawn into dysfunctional or unhealthy relationships, even from early childhood. If we found something that felt like love and affirmation, we often clung to it, no matter the consequences. This sometimes even included other males who used us for sexual pleasure, or who we used sexually to feel close to and loved by.

Touch Deprivation

The cultural message is clear: Real men don't touch. Unfortunately, this taboo often carries over to fathers and sons, even when boys are still very young, and to brothers and close friends. Men in our culture seem afraid of being perceived as homosexual, or even of "making" themselves or someone else homosexual by hugging, holding or touching them. But the very thing they fear is the thing they are creating: a society of touch-deprived boys who grow up longing to be held by a man. If the need to be touched and held isn't met in childhood, it doesn't just go away because a boy grows into a man. For us, the desire was so primal, and so long denied, that some of us sought sex with a man at times when all we really wanted was to be held. We just didn't know how else to receive the non-sexual touch we craved.

Spiritual Emptiness

Inherent in every one of these issues, and a common thread throughout them, is a profound spiritual emptiness. Sometimes this emptiness manifested itself in deliberate rebellion against God (or our individual perceptions of God) whereby we refused to turn to him on his terms. Sometimes it was seen in pleading prayers for rescue that seemed to go unheard or unanswered. Sometimes we demonstrated it through an intense effort at "self salvation" by trying to be so perfect in every other aspect of our lives that somehow either our homosexual problems would go away by themselves or God would overlook them. Often, it was a cyclical combination of these. But in any case, we couldn't be truly spiritually whole and emotionally broken, or emotionally whole and spiritually broken. Healing had to come about in both.

These, then, were oftentimes the problems buried below the surface symptoms of our homosexuality. Most of us experienced most of them, to one degree or another. Complex, interwoven and painful, they drove us to homosexual relationships in an attempt to find healing. But we found that acting on these homosexual desires actually worsened rather than lessened the underlying problems. Homosexuality, for us, wasn't the solution, it was an escape from solving the real problems that had caused the symptoms to begin with.

Most men who struggle with unwanted homosexual feelings are all too familiar with the symptoms of their homosexuality problems. It is so easy to see the symptoms, and so difficult to look underneath the symptoms for the underlying problems. A few of the most painful and disturbing symptoms are noted here.

Lust

Idolization of men turned easily to eroticism. Unable to feel "man enough" on the inside, we craved another male to "complete" us from the outside. Looking at or touching another male's body allowed us to literally "feel" masculinity in a way we could never seem to feel on our own, inside ourselves. But indulging the lust through pornography, fantasy or voyeurism only intensified it. It further de-humanized the men we lusted after and isolated us from them, widening the growing gulf between us and "real men" that made them seem like the "opposite" sex. Lust also opened the door for us to the quick sand of sexual addiction.

Sexual Addiction

Sexual gratification can be immensely intoxicating to men. As soon as some of us started using lust or pornography to anesthetize our emotional pain, we were on the fast track to sexual addiction - perhaps one of the easiest addictions for men to fall into and most difficult to emerge from. Those of us who became addicted to sex or pornography found that, to emerge from a homosexual addiction, we often had to work at least two "recovery programs" simultaneously - a "detox" program to withdraw from our sex habit and a program of masculine affirmation and inner healing to resolve the emotional pain.

Obsession

Even those of us who were able to avoid acting on our homosexual feelings with other men or lusting to the point of addiction often found ourselves becoming obsessed with the bodies of men and their sexuality. We found ourselves looking at them constantly and comparing ourselves to them, inevitably coming up short in our estimation. As gay culture obsesses on the physical, and especially on youthfulness, we too found it easy to become obsessed with these ideal qualities.

Guilt

Our lusts and obsessions led many of us to deep feelings of guilt and shame that pulled us down even further. We didn't want to be gay. We didn't want anyone to know of our feelings. Some of us drowned in guilt to the point of contemplating suicide. Others decided guilt was the problem and tried to stamp it out guilt by ignoring our conscience, discarding our religious faith, breaking ties to family, giving ourselves permission to indulge our lusts with abandon, looking for "Mr. Right" and embracing "gay pride."

Did it work? It seemed to, for a time. But those of us who tried it found that silencing our conscience seemed to lead us inevitably deeper and deeper into the dark side of "gay life," where we needed more and coarser sexual experience to deliver the same "high." It broke our spiritual yearning for God and for goodness. Those of us who took this course eventually hit bottom and, humbled at last, turned for help.

Internal Conflict

For most of this, these problems and their symptoms ultimately resulted in such extreme conflict it sometimes felt like it would tear us apart. Our inner selves craved emotional healing and wholeness. Our spiritual selves craved a Higher Power and purpose. Our social selves craved unity with heterosexual men and acceptance into the masculine world. But, fueled by our lusts, our sexual selves threatened to overpower them all. Our sexual selves lied to us that we could satisfy all our desires and find joy and healing by having sex with other men. Ultimately, someone had to win. We could not live in this state of internal warfare forever.

Therapy

Gay-affirmative therapy is supposed to be the "cure" for unwanted homosexual desires, according to gay activists and the major therapeutic associations (whose professional motto seems to be, "If we can't figure out how to fix it, it must not be broken"). The problem, they say, is not with the desires, but with the fact that they are unwanted. But we didn't want to be affirmed as gay. We wanted to be affirmed as MEN. We needed to heal lifelong feelings of being different from other guys.

We needed to heal our "father wounds" and "father hunger." We needed to heal our sense of estrangement from men and our own masculinity. Affirming our "gayness" could never accomplish that. Only affirming our manhood - affirming our place in the world of men -- could bring us the healing we needed.

After all, our wounds, at their root, were not about sex. They were about a little boy's deepest needs to feel loved and wanted and to feel okay as a male. Sex could never heal them. Only brotherly love could heal them: the love of God, the love of other men, of mentors, of fathers and father figures, and especially love of ourselves, as men. Call it "gender-affirmative" therapy: learning to experience at last, in non-sexual ways, the masculine love and affirmation we had secretly longed for all our lives. In many ways, that is what those of us who sought out reparative therapy or inner-child therapy experienced.

As David writes:

"My therapeutic work wasn't about switching the gender of my sexual preference. It was about escaping the problems underlying them - anxiety, shame and fear... I worked with (my therapist) for two years, focusing on building relationships with other men, getting past my incapacitating shame, and developing a strong masculine identity. The 'great divide' in my life between me and other men began to close... And yes, my sexual orientation changed too."

Gay activists have lambasted and politicized reparative or sexual re-orientation therapy and persuaded the major therapeutic professional associations, out of political correctness, to vilify and condemn it. Deliberate mis-characterizations of reparative therapy abound. But those of us who went through reparative therapy found it to be a deeply healing experience. It helped bring us out of shame. It helped us release anger. It helped us heal lifelong hurts and emotional wounds. It taught us how to "repair" childhood yearnings for male affirmation and acceptance by fulfilling them, often with new heterosexual male friends and mentor-father figures, instead of repressing them. Instead of focusing on our sexual orientation, reparative therapy focused on healing with other men (especially our fathers and peers) and with ourselves as men.

As the client, we directed the therapy. We were never coerced. We were never shamed. (And we certainly never received electric shocks, as some claim!) And because good reparative therapists act more as a compassionate mentor than an aloof, disinterested professional, we began to learn to trust men and overcome our defensive detachment from them, sometimes for the first time in our lives.

Almost as a byproduct of our inner work and our relationship work with men, our sexual desire for men began to subside. The stronger we felt in our own masculine, the less desire for men and the more interest in women we began to feel.

Ben writes of his experience:

"With my eyes closed and the music playing softly, I heard the strong, deep voice of my trusted therapist affirming, 'You are a man. You are strong. You have broken the power that once tied you to your mother's identity. You have proven yourself as a man among men. You are whole. Not perfect, but you're okay not being perfect. You are whole.' "Tears rolled down my face. I believed him! It was true, and I finally knew it. I was whole! I no longer desired men sexually. I was one of them, not their opposite. I didn't need a man to complete me. Yet the irony is, I felt more bonded and connected to men and manhood than I had all of my life. THIS is what I had been seeking all those years from all those men. THIS is what I had really wanted all along -- this REAL connection, not the fantasy one. Connection to men. Connection to my own manhood. A real connection to God. Wholeness within myself. I felt my heart almost burst out of my chest with joy."

So what could be so wrong with such healing reparative therapy? Only that it is political incorrect in today's society for someone who experiences homosexual urges to not want to be gay. But we are not talking about politics. We are talking about our very lives, and our freedom to heal. "Going straight" is not a hate crime. For us, it is an affirmation of our true identity as men.

David Matheson, reparative therapist in Los Angeles, writes:

In the years I've been working as a reparative therapist, I've noticed some common tendencies among men who are successful in diminishing homosexuality as well as some commonalties among those who are unsuccessful. Please keep in mind that these are impressions and not the results of a study. Most of my impressions are from men who are (or have been) in therapy. I have not had occasion over the past few years to closely observe men who are not in therapy. But I believe that much of what I've written below would apply equally, if not more so, to men who choose not to engage in therapy.

In general, I believe success in this (or any) therapy process can be attributed to a single, simple principle: People spontaneously change for the better when they let go of their resistance to change. In other words, to change is natural if we can just get out of the way and let it happen. Of course, the problem with this is that men dealing with homosexuality typically have so much in the way that unblocking the natural change process can be like removing the Hoover Dam.

The tendencies I've written about below can all be seen in the context of resistance. That is, these are all barriers that people unconsciously erect in their lives to prevent change. Often, these barriers are unintentional and occasionally they may even be unavoidable. The stronger and more ingrained the pattern of resistance is--and the less aware the person is that the pattern is actually resistance--the less success the person will have in changing. I'm not sure that understanding the reasons for the resistance is that important.

Resistance may come from reticence to give up physical pleasure, discomfort with painful emotions that have to be faced, or simply fear of change. But regardless of what is causing the resistance, the resistance must be overcome or progress will be hampered. I've divided these resistant tendencies into four different areas: life situation, unwillingness to invest, unwillingness to risk, and living as a victim. I've first listed the tendencies common among unsuccessful clients, then I've contrasted them with the approach taken by successful clients.

Life Situation

• Extreme stress or commitments due to work, family, school, or church demands. Successful clients prioritize and eliminate from their schedule things that get in the way of what is most important.
• A chaotic life that doesn't allow for a regular, ongoing therapy process. The chaos may be due to factors such as finances, work schedule, transportation problems, illness of self or family members, etc. Successful clients find ways to surmount or minimize chaos that occurs in their lives in order to allow the therapeutic process to continue.

Unwillingness to Invest

• Not taking the problem seriously, as expressed in statements like, "I don't need therapy," "I don't need group," or "It's too expensive." Successful clients recognize the seriousness of their situation and willingly do whatever is necessary to bring about change.
• Ambivalence about committing to change, as expressed in statements like, "I want to change, but right now I need this boyfriend." Successful clients are willing to let go of whatever leads them away from their goal. That willingness may not be there all at once, but successful clients continue to push themselves toward it.
• False dependency on faith and spirituality without doing the psychological and emotional work necessary to bring about change. At its roots, homosexuality is NOT a spiritual problem. Spiritual problems develop when homosexual behavior is engaged in. But to begin with, same-sex attraction is a developmental arrest that is psychological in nature. Spirituality alone will not change homosexuality! This is why we so often hear the complaint, "I prayed for years and the Lord never took this problem away."

Successful clients wisely ask for God's help with SPECIFIC needs, praying for opportunities that are needed, and allowing the Spirit to comfort and sustain them. Yet they never shift the burden of responsibility onto the Lord.

Unwillingness to Risk

• Sacrificing authenticity for comfort, as expressed in statements like, "I can't do this, it's too uncomfortable." Unsuccessful clients get overwhelmed by their own emotions and withdraw from therapy. Successful clients willingly face their fears both internally (hurtful emotions) and externally (frightening relationships and situations). This is one of the main factors separating successful from unsuccessful clients.
• Feeling such shame over your struggles that you refuse to be open with others about what you are going through. This is often expressed in statements like, "I can't tell anyone about me," or "I have to work through this alone so that no one ever finds out." Successful clients open themselves to other people and ask for help.
• A rigid approach to life, which prevents you from going beyond previous limitations, seeing new perspectives, doing new things, exploring new ways of thinking and living, and doing things you've never done before. Successful clients are open to the possibility of change in every aspect of their lives.

Living as a Victim

• Passivity, as manifested in statements like, "I don't know what to do," or "I just don't think I can change." This is also manifested as a tendency to NOT seek out help, or to be very narrow in the therapeutic activities you pursue. Perhaps you go to group meetings occasionally, but you essentially keep yourself ignorant of other opportunities. Successful clients take the responsibility for their change process and seek out every source of information and help available, such as individual and group therapy, straight male friendships, New Warriors participation, activity in a church, etc.
• Being a "help-rejecting complainer." These are individuals who are constantly complaining about the problems they face, and yet when help is offered they immediately come up with reasons why each suggestion won't work for them. Or they may half-heartedly try the suggestion just long enough to prove its ineffectiveness. Successful clients are willing to go outside the comfort of their complaints and actually try to solve their problems.

Copyrighted by People Can Change. Read more at www.peoplecanchange.com