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>> Were you always attracted to men/boys?
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Honestly I don't know. That is not a cop-out, but let me explain: When I was a little boy I played around like other little boys. It's difficult to decide whether it was more or less than other children. They say it is normal for all children to mess around with other childrenof the same sex. Just this week I saw two nine year old girls messing around in the pool, kissing each other. I remember an experience with another boy in my class, where we played outside, pretending that we were Tarzan and Jane. I was Jane, so I dunno if that means anything (*smile*). We kissed each other on the mouth a lot, but it never went further than that.
Maybe what makes me think that I was different, was that I remember clearly that I dreamed about a young guy who was in my school when I was in Junior School. I was so in love with him that I felt my heart would break. I can remember that dream today and I must have been in the second grade. I was also particularly aware of the bulge in the swimming instructor's speedo, and that I got an erection when I was roughing around with a guys I was friendly with (much to his disgust!)
But to be honest, if I had to say whether I was always acutely aware of being attracted to other guys from a very young age, then the answer is "no". Actually, I always had girl-friends and was intimate with them without having actual sex. But there came a time, after I acted out the first time, when I tried to sustain a relationship with some girls, but I just couldn't. Once I had acted out with a man, it was a lost cause. I hope that answers the question.
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>> Why do you think you turned out like this?
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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.
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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.
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>> When did you first act out?
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Well, as I mentioned elsewhere, I was mildly active as a child, but probably not consciously homosexual. All during school, I had girlfriends, although I never was sexually active to the point of penetration. I came very close, though.
At the age of 18 I entered university (college) and within a week found myself thinking and saying things that I had never (consciously) though and said before. I was in res and we were subjected to initiation, and so all the guys who were not the macho he-man types seemed to band together for comfort and mutual support. I found myself associating with all the gay guys. Of course, in the beginning it was never mentioned that they were gay (this was 1979) but we instinctively knew we had something in common.
I changed roommates, because the guy who I was sharing with was just such an incredibly impossibly unlikeable... (I mistakenly took him to a gay bar, showing him what my new lifestyle was. He seemed OK with it when I told him I was gay and seemed interested in the gay scene. I never for one moment thought he could be gay, but hoped against hope that he, who was my roommate after all, could accept my choice. From the next day he turned into a monster.) Eventually, in self-defence, I moved out and into a room with a guy who, if he is still a man today, I will eat my hat. He had a high voice, no beard, and was extremely refined and effeminate. In moving in with him I was making some very public choices about whom I was choosing to associate with. Even though this new roommate, not suprisingly, considering all the victimising that he endured, moved out soon after that, the die was cast for me.
The thought started going through my head that I might be gay. I can't recall if I was attracted to anybody or not, but I know that it was such a terribly insecure time, where any affirmation would have been good, that this could have been a strong factor in what happened next.
There was a guy who seemed to have it all together. He was well-groomed and his clothes were to die for. It just seemed that if this guy could like me, I would surely be somebody (Isn't that some of the basis for all of our same-sexual attractions?) So one day I found myself saying to him that I thought I might be bisexual. That wasn't as "bad" as being gay, so it seemed like a "safe" thing to say to a guy who was so together. He admitted to being gay, and soon I dragged him into bed.
It seemed like the most natural thing in the world when we first had sex. I was excited and definitely hooked. I knew just what to do and took to it like a duck to water.
So the short answer is, 18!
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>> Were you happy as a gay man?
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Change?
This is not as simple as you may think! Yes, God is powerful and yes, he wants us to be whole, but in his funny way he can seem quite contrary to us. I mean, what is simpler to him, than to wave his magic wand and declare us "straight", right? Wrong!
We were broken through relationships and so we will be healed through relationships. That is not to deny that God does heal us when we cry out to him, but his methods are not necessarily up to our specifications of comfort and ease!
To make matters worse, you same-sex attractions are hardwired into your brain, and so we have to weaken those habits of relating through "renewing of our minds": Literally! As they say, "old habits die hard", and they die best when replaced with new ones.
So get used to is...there this hard work ahead!!!
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The short answer is, yes. After all, what we look for as gay men, is affirmation from another man. We think that if we are "loved" by another man, we are fulfilled.
Initially I was devastated, because I grew up in a conservative community, not to mention country (South Africa), and I knew what the bible said about homosexuality. I tried to get over it by praying about it (not too seriously) because my conscience told me that it was wrong. I even tried to have a relationship with an old girlfriend who was at the same university. It didn't work. I didn't get over it, and my relationship with my ex just didn't have the same charm anymore. So, without making a conscious decision about it, I just drifted out of being uncomfortable with it, and started enjoying myself.
Because I was young (18) when I entered the gay scene, it was easy to be happy. Sex is easy to obtain, and when you are attracted to another man, the excitement can easily pass for love and contentment. Even now, when I think back of some of my experiences, my heart skips a beat. There was certainly a lot of excitement involved in this lifestyle. My only obligation was to enjoy myself and see that my itches were scratched.
In 1983 I met a man who was to be my lover for altogether 7 years, 5 of which we lived together. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't moved to London. It was the perfect relationship. Everybody knew that we would be together for life. To crown it all, we had the dream arrangement. We were in an "open relationship" which meant that we were free to have sexual intercourse with other men, as long as we didn't get emotionally involved. For the first 2 years it went well, because we didn't use the privilege. But then I went away to do a show in another city, and things went horribly wrong. To be fair, this could have happened in any committed relationship, even a heterosexual one. I used the privilege of our open relationship, and fell in love with the guy that I was having sex with. This will be remembered as one of the most painful experiences I have ever had. It caused hurt all round. Three people caught in a whirlwind of broken promises and expectations.
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I managed to pull my relationship together again, with difficulty. My lover was like a father to me. When I met him, my whole personality changed. My interests were subsumed in his. I changed from a relatively empty-headed young queer into a political activist. For 5 years all I thought of was to be the person that my lover wanted me to be. This isn't a gay thing either. It can happen to any co-dependent person. It's just that, because one broken man cannot give another broken man what he hasn't got himself, my needs were unmet. I moved around in a fog of marijuana addiction, striving to be a professional singer, succeeding, but still unfulfilled.
I know that some gay people succeed in reconciling their homosexuality with their Christianity, but I was not able to and under the influence of my lover, I turned my back on God altogether. I became an "atheist". My homosexuality became my god. My gay identity was all that I wanted to be and was and so everything that I was hid in the shadow of my homosexuality. I shoved everybody's nose in it, even in the army where I was very out of the closet.
Funny enough, when my lover of 5 years at that time, moved away, to start a career in London (I was to follow later) one of the first things that started happening amidst the sleeping around and circular seeking for stability, was that I began to seek after a spiritual life again. The cynics amongst my readers will say that it was because I had lost a lover, but, well, maybe it was.
Just before I gave my life to the Lord in 1991, I experienced the unhappiest time I had as a gay man. I met and fell in love with a young man that represented everything that I wanted. He was beautiful, and people fell over themselves to be with him. He chose me, and so started the cycle of lust and possessiveness that was to almost drive me mad. I was so jealous of him that finally I drove him away from me. He represented the pinnacle of achievement for me as a gay man, and when he left me amidst lies and deceit, I was devastated. I got involved with another very mixed up man who was into every spiritual and occult practise and belief you could wish to mention, as well as sleeping around, and I can be glad I didn't catch aids.
The gay lifestyle wasn't all it had cracked up to be. I don't think that I consciously thought that I was unhappy, but hindsight is 20/20, so I can see I was heading for a fall. Maybe I was a bubble-head anyway, but there is nothing in that life that can compare with what I have now. Thank God I left it behind. When I meet men who are in the lifestyle, who ask me questions about changing etc. I feel a great sense of "darkness" hanging over them. It engulfs my heart and I remember that my life had no hope and no purpose.
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>> What made you decide to try to change?
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It's interesting that when I finally made a commitment to changing, it didn't take me a lot of time to decide to do it. It was what lead up to it that took the time.
I started reading books about the occult in 1989 when my lover left the country to live in London (see "Were you happy as a gay man?" for that part of the story). I was into all sorts of things, reading about Theosophy, Wicca and the Caballah mostly. Some of the literature that I read, mostly the New Age stuff spoke about the Christ consciousness, and because I had been a nominal Christian before, I didn't find it too hard to pray to the (non-threatening) Christ consciousness. I was praying quite regularly when I played the part of Jesus in the musical "Godspell" at the end of 1990. Of course, I could do all the things I wanted to, like smoke dope, drink a lot, sleep around etc. if I wanted to, because the new age religion very obligingly doesn't prescribe behaviour except to adjure us all to goodness.
Some time before a friend of mine moved in with me because he didn't have a job or a place to stay. He was a fallen Christian who was also into the gay lifestyle, and of course all his good Christian friends were praying for him, so they just started praying for me too! Since I was getting closer and closer to faith in the true Christ anyway, this was just the nudge I needed. It wasn't that I knew that they were praying for me or even would have approved, because they were all, according to me, a bunch of lily-livered wimps who looked pretty boring.
One morning while I was walking in the park with my dog, I was praying as usual, when I just had the overwhelming conviction that what I was praying to was a person and that his Name was Jesus and that he was rightfully Lord of my life. It wasn't a very emotional experience. But I did realise at once that my life would have to change, and somehow I had made the preparations in my mind to be willing. Perhaps the inherent chaos of my life (See "Were you happy as a gay man?") had plowed the ground up.
The bottom line is that I knew from my past growing up in a conservative Afrikaans Community, what the Bible said about homosexuality (For a discussion on the subject, click here). I found myself saying to my new Lord that, whereas I was gay and I knew what he thought about that lifestyle, I wouldn't be able to change myself, so I would expect him to change me if he wanted to. The rest of that story is told at "Do you ever think about having sex with a man anymore?" and "How has being a Christian influenced your sexuality
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>> Do you ever think of having sex with a man anymore?
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Once again, there is a short answer and a long explanation. The short answer is... "NO!"
I believe strongly that if you make up your mind that this is not an option anymore, you are able to take a big step in the direction of being free from the desire to have sex with a man. It's the same as any heterosexual couple who have a monogamous relationship. If you are unwillingly trapped into a relationship where you would rather be with anybody but your spouse/partner, then your eyes will stray and you will consciously or unconsciously be on the lookout for an opportunity to sleep with somebody else. If, in the back of your mind you are secretly convinced that there is somebody else out there that would be better to be with than your current "partner" then you will sniffing the wind for other opportunities.
But if you are convinced that what is happening in your life is the best that God can have for you, then you will not be looking out for something else. This is the case with me.
Firstly, I am convinced that it is not God's will for me to act out same-sex attractions. So, right from the start I avoided everything that could put me in a place where I would be vulnerable to something like that. As time went by the reason for the need to be united with a man sexually diminished more and more. God the Father poured love and affirmation of my masculinity into that space where the emptiness exists and so I am more and more enabled to act out my destiny as a whole man.
It is interesting that when I don't spend regular time in God's presence worshiping him and being in a place to receive his love and affirmation, then I become more vulnerable. It's a basic principle of walking in the Spirit. I am able to conform to my true identity to the degree that I fulfil my true calling, namely, to worship the Father and submit my will and identity to him for his shaping.
The cynics will be saying that this proves that I can never change completely, and in a sense this is true. I will probably never be fully heterosexual. But I am free enough to live my life as a husband and father to a degree that is satisfying to me and my family, and I am becoming more and more free all the time.
I am never overcome by an irresistible urge to sleep with a man. The worst it gets is that sometime I am aware of a man in a way that plays into my insecurities in a particular way, and I must be careful to make sure that I guard my heart and mind (see the article I wrote about that) and go where the real need can be met. This genuinely works. I go into my study, put on some worship music and cry out my pain and loneliness to the Father. It is not the man that I have seen that I need, but rather the affirmation of my Lord, and then, I kid you not, everything is OK.
It's no good just fighting the urges. They only become stronger if we resist them without applying the medication that God provided. We must go to the source to quench our real thirst. GOD IS FAITHFUL!
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>> Do you enjoy sexual relations with your wife?
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The short answer is "YES!" I have never struggled in my sexual attraction to my wife. I know some gay men cannot even imagine themselves in bed with a woman. They are completely turned off by the thought of having heterosexual sex. This is not the case with me, and I don't think it ever was. My issues with my mother did not leave that kind of scar on my sexuality (see "Why do you think you turned out like this? " for a full explanation).
It was more that I was overwhelmingly sexually attracted to men. Once that was in the process of being dealt with (see "Do you ever think about having sex with a man anymore?") I was free to enjoy sex with my wife.
The problems (yes there are some) come with the sexual habits I learned as a gay man, and these are far more difficult to get rid of than the actual attraction to men. The first and most difficult, is the ingrained notion that my wife should take as short a time as I to get turned on (after all, a male sexual partner does). Because it takes her roughly 10 times as long as me to become sexually aroused, I sometimes find it very daunting to try to initiate sexual contact with her. (This is called laziness). In my understanding this is a problem most heterosexual men face. This is just the way God has created us, and so it is something we have to learn to deal with in a sacrificial way. From what I understand, most men get around this problem by just having sex with their wives anyway, and so the woman never has a satisfying experience.
This forces us to work with our wives in a way that maintains personal intimacy between us in an ongoing way, and most men fail in this regard, from what I hear from people I know who have no homosexual past.
Another component is the fact that, as a result of years of masturbation, I really struggle with premature ejaculation. This is a particularly private thing to share on a Website like this, but it is only fair to try and warn people that their habits will have consequences in later life, that may complicate matters.
Masturbation itself is also a problem I have to deal with. Most men do, apparently, and since it satisfies me so easily and without any (time consuming) foreplay, it robs my wife of intimacy. This is not something which directly results from any feelings about sex with my wife, but rather an adolescent habit which I have to keep a check on all the time.
How much more than that would you like to know? (smile)
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>> How has being a Christian influenced your sexuality?
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Well, to start off with, it prompted me to consider the possibility that I might be able to change a lifestyle which had become my identity. When I gave my life to the Lord after a period of spiritual searching (See "What made you decide to try to change?") I was somehow ready to consider that I would have to give up my right to decide about my own sexuality.
This is an enormous thing and has to be a factor in any Christian's walk with God, hetero- as well as homosexual. There will be no change without it. If you somehow carry the notion around in the back of your mind that God is spoiling your fun, you can forget it, you will not change. Christian do not have rights, and before we commit to Jesus, we have only one right: the right to choose between life and death!
That is the first influence my Christianity had on my life. And that is also the main reason that I have any success at all in my struggle with an unwanted same-sex attraction.
Another influence has been in the area of masculinity. I was never terribly effeminate, but I did have a huge gaping hole in my image of myself as a man. I would be completely intimidated by whole, heterosexual men, desiring to be like them and therefore desiring them. Before I became a Christian, I was mostly surrounded by gay men, who were all searching for the perfect lover to complete them. After I became a Christian, I found that I slowly but surely started building non-sexual relationships with other men, and with righteous Christian leaders who in a sense "re-fathered" me. This has had a tremendous influence. Not so long ago I had a very significant dream. I will describe it briefly because of it's extraordinary influence on my life.
I was at a picnic of some sort, and present were several people, among them my current pastor. I went up to him and asked him if he knew what the name "Mephibosheth" means. Now please note that I couldn't even pronounce the name in my waking state, let alone had thought much about it, much less did I know what it meant. Anyway, my pastor in my dream said: "That's it!" and then I went moggy. I picked him up and threw him down a steep incline. Even in my dream I knew that what was happening was demonic. There was more, but I woke up the next morning and checked what the name means. It means "dispeller of shame (i.e. of Baal)" according to the Strong's Concordance. (Baal is one of the idols of sexual sin, and is mostly associated with sexual perversion. He was one of the gods that Yahweh warned the Israelites to have nothing to do with). Then I checked who Mephibosheth was, and found that he was a son of Jonathan, and was a cripple. Because David wanted to honour any living relative of his good friend Jonathan, this cripple ended up at the king's table (it was unheard of that this should happen).
The Lord was saying three things:
1. Shame was the problem and that it was demonic
2. I would dispel shame (my own, and others'?)
3. I would sit at the king's table in spite of my affliction honoured because of whose son I am.
In the ensuing months, I was delivered of this affliction: the shame that clung to me for who knows what reason. One reason was that I was unwanted by my father (see "Why do you think you turned out like this? ") and never could earn his love, as well as the possibility that I might have been abused (no memories, but all the symptoms)
Today I can look almost any man in the eye. I have relapses but God is progressively changing my outlook.
Today I am a youth pastor, ministering to many young people. My past isn't an issue, even though I often use it in my sermons. Ironically, I am a father to many, often to ever-straight men who are my senior in years and position.
God is amazing
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>> Can you honestly say it was worth it??
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