Why do you think you turned out like this?
Posted on Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 9:00 AM by Duncan Bouwer
Well, if you believe all the theories that are doing the rounds about absent fathers etc. then I suppose I am a prime candidate. Let me describe my upbringing to you.
I suffered from rejection by my father even when I was still in the womb. When my mother fell pregnant with me, there was no party, let me tell you. My parents' relationship was long over when I was conceived. (My dad started messing around with other women soon after my parents were married.) When he found out about the pregnancy, he asked the woman whom he was seeing at the time (a nurse) whether she could give my mother something to terminate the pregnancy. Although my mother refused, that rejection was felt and internalised right from day zero.
My mother, in an effort to get back at my dad, also messed around a lot. Oddly enough, my parents were only divorced when I was nine, but I hardly ever saw my dad. He never affirmed me that I can remember, except to "show me off" when I performed well. I had a good singing voice and enjoyed singing, but developed a phobia of performing when he would punish me if I wouldn't show off to his friends.
Some of our best friends were my godmother, who was in a long-standing relationship with her female lover. Later on another of my family members, whom I will not disclose to protect privacy, also had a relationship with another person of the same sex.
The role models I had were very skewed. Everything my dad represented was abhorrent to me. I disassociated from him as a role model and care giver at a very early age. When I reached adolescence, this deficit was eroticised, manifesting itself as a same-sex attraction.
My relationship with my mother was also very sick. She was never able to give me adequate care as a result of her own brokenness. I started taking care of myself from a very early age. There were always suicide threats, deep depression and alcohol abuse. I was forced to grow up very quickly. She was not able impart any adequate sense of "being".
My brother and sister, both barely surviving the chaos in our family, also abused me emotionally and verbally. I was small and given to temper, so they called me names and provoked me whenever they could. I had a very bad self-image and not surprisingly grew up thinking I was ugly and unloveable.
Later, when undergoing counselling, my counsellor observed that he thought I had been abused by sin. There was much immorality going on, including alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity and even some family violence. Whether this was enough to make me gay, I don't know. Suffice to say, I had very strong attractions to the same sex by the time I hit 18.