Back 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next

Now there's good news and bad news about this point of view that I'm presenting to you. The good news is this: all of the men who I know who have been successful in overcoming homosexuality have said that one of the things that had to happen is they had to learn they weren't as different from other men as they thought they were. They thought they were incredibly different; they had universally overinterpreted themselves as being vastly different than other people. And I look at my clients all the time and tell them, “Here's the good news: I can say with complete confidence, I believe with all my heart that there is no difference between you and me with regard to something called sexual orientation or homosexuality. No difference. There is no difference between us, except this: you can remember how to be sexually aroused by other men because you've done it. I can't remember how to do it because I've never done it.”

Gay rights activists sometimes say, “You think we can become straight? Well, could you become gay?” And my response is, “Probably. I would prefer not to--it seems to cause a lot of hassle in people's lives. I've got my own hassles, thank you very much.” But I do believe that most people could probably change and be oriented in a different way. That's the good news.

The bad news is this: if the metaphor we use is one of disease, we would hope to find a cure. If it was a wound, we would wait for the wound to heal; if it was a condition, we would look for treatments for the condition. But if this is a memory, if this is something I can remember how to do, how do you get rid of a memory? Amnesia? I will look at clients all the time and say, “For you to completely lose the ability to ever be sexually aroused by another man”--now losing the ability is different than losing the compulsion or the habit, but to lose the ability so you just couldn't do it--“that would be about as easy as if I were to say, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed…', and for you not to think ‘Reindeer.'”

How would you do that? Well, they say, “Well, I would substitute something.” Okay, I would sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Buffalo” 50,000 times, and pretty soon “buffalo” is coming to mind more readily than “reindeer.” But guess what? Every once in a while out of nowhere, random firing of neurons in the game--“reindeer” comes back into my mind: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Buffalo,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Now what do I do? I'll show you what you might do if you were emotionally sensitive and very introspective and strongly perfectionistic. You might do something like this: “Reindeer…Oh, no, reindeer! I did reindeer again; I can't believe it! I still have this reindeer orientation! It's always going to be reindeer! I can't believe it! All of my prayers, all of the therapy, all of the work, it's ruined--it's reindeer, reindeer, reindeer! I'm never going to be--it's reindeer! It's going to be reindeer my whole life! I can't believe I'll never be but a reindeer!”

What have I just done? Strongly solidified the interpretation, reinforced it; instead of saying it once, I said it a dozen times with great emotional emphasis. That's what many of these young men do. What we try to get them to do is do something like this: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer…Oh, I used to do that a lot…Rudolph the Red-Nosed Buffalo,” and go on, move on, decrease their emotional reactivity to this. It's a key component in treating this problem and very, very difficult to do. They believe that they're supposed to fight it with all of their heart, that they should have strong emotional reactions to it, that that's what a good person would do. But it just digs them deeper and deeper like a man struggling in quicksand is pulled lower and lower.

Now I want to talk to you quickly about how this problem develops. Okay, Jeff, if it's an interpretation, if it's meaning, if it's not a thing that people have that makes them feel this way, how does the story get started? How do they develop that interpretation? Well, there are some fairly common patterns, and I want to talk about two of the most common today.

The first is very simple and straightforward: a young man hears in preadolescent years or early adolescent years about chastity, virtue. And he makes up his mind at a very deep level that he is not going to think sexual thoughts about women. And he moves all women into a category like his sister or his mother--he would never do that, they're too pure, too sacred to think that way about. But nobody ever said anything to him in a sacrament meeting talk or a priesthood lesson about thinking that way about men. And there is somewhat less resistance to thinking that way about men because they hadn't been warned or taught about that. In addition, they are men; they get to see themselves in the mirror, they get to go to the locker room. There's less of a barrier there. And so I will often talk to clients and say, “If you were to have explicit sexual fantasies about a girl that were just as explicit and real as the fantasies you might have about guys, which would you feel most guilty about?” And almost all of them will say, “I'd feel more guilty about thinking that way about a girl.” I'd say, “Really? Would you feel twice as guilty?” “Yeah, twice as guilty.” “Three times as guilty?” “Yes, three times as guilty.” “Four times as guilty?” “Hmm, not sure.” Three to four times as much guilt thinking about women that way as about men; see how someone who is introspective and wants to be good gets caught up in that pattern?

Second pattern, a little bit more complicated but even more universally true. And when I present this to men, nine out of ten at least will say to me, “You have just described my life. You have just described me. How did you know?” Well, I ask. Here's how that pattern goes; this is what men will say to me: first, “I have always felt different from or rejected by other men or boys.” For some men, this has to do with the relationship with their father; some felt distant from their father or felt that their father didn't approve of them. Some didn't like their father, didn't want to be like him. But for many men, it doesn't have much to do with their father at all; traditional psychoanalytic ways of viewing this problem say it's always about the father, but I run into men all the time who say they had good relationships with their dad. The traditional viewpoint on that is, “Well, you might have thought you had a good relationship with your dad, but we'll get down to it.” But I believe them.

Some it was just relationships with peers: they might have been made fun of, or felt different, called “gay” or “fag” or other kinds of names when they were growing up. Some were left out of activities, some just simply did not like traditional masculine activities like sports or cars or other kinds of things; they were drawn more to artistic endeavors. They're more expressive, they were more verbal. They like art or music or drama or other kinds of things. But in somewhere in there, they felt different from or rejected by other men. Because of this, they began to focus on other boys very intently; almost obsessively they focused and thought about other boys, and that focus took one or more of three different forms.

The first was envy; they did a lot of comparing: “Why can't I be like other guys? I am so different. Why can't I have that guy's good looks, that guy's popularity, that guy's muscles, that guy's body, that guy's sexual development, that guy's popularity?” Lots and lots of comparing.

Second way that they focused on other boys was wanting to belong; they saw people walking around friends, buddies, slapping each other on the back, being friends, and they wanted to belong. They wanted to fit in. They wanted to be cared about and included.

Third way they focused on other people: fascination and curiosity. They found them just intriguing, these other men, they were intrigued by their masculinity, by their sexual development, intrigued by them aesthetically--they found them beautiful. So in one or more, often all three different ways, they became very focused on other men.

Back 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next