In this post I will begin looking at some of the issues that men with unwanted SSA will face as they go through Reparative Therapy. I will begin by stating what I believe to be the most fundamental root cause of male SSA, the seed that grows into the condition we call homosexuality, if you will.
I have been involved with New Hope Ministries, in one form or another, for 28 years. I have, over the years, met many men who were seeking help with their SSA. The one statement that I have heard repeatedly is, “I have always felt different from other males.” This sense of being different led us to believe that we were less than other males, that we lacked what other males had. This feeling did not just happen by itself, as there are many different things that we experienced as children, and how we responded to them, that contributed to and reinforced this sense of being different. That said, the goal of Reparative Therapy, simply put, is to bring men to a place where they no longer feel this sense of difference. Having reached that place, they can then begin to move forward in assimilating a heathy male identity.
Sounds simple, right? There are, however, many changes that we must go through to reach that goal. When you grow up thinking that you are not a man in the sense that other men are, it truly becomes your “identity,” something that is deeply rooted in you.
Let me give a disclaimer that will, I hope, clarify something. Feeling different from other males is not something that only men who grow up to develop SSA feel; some straight men also have had this feeling. What sets us apart from them is how differently we responded.
Case in point, another thing that is also universal in men who deal with SSA is Defensive Detachment. As its name implies, we began to detach emotionally from the other males in our lives, such as our fathers and male peers, as a way of protecting ourselves from hurt. Building emotional walls to keep others out will indeed help us from being hurt. However, the unintended consequence is that it also prevents us from receiving the emotional support and that sense of belonging that healthy relationships provide.
The one thing that detaching emotionally from others will not do is protect us from how we feel about ourselves. We are left alone with our feelings, with no way to objectively judge if our feelings and how we view ourselves is, in fact, accurate. The longer we cut ourselves off from our male peers, and the normal socialization that results from being around other males, the more “different” we feel. The more different we feel, the more we detach. This dynamic is also one of the triggers for others to bully the boy who is not like everyone else, further exacerbating the sense of being different. Speaking for myself, I reached a point as a child where I simply was not able to lower my emotional walls, even if I had wanted to.
This is where the group therapy sessions that are a part of R.T. (Reparative Therapy) come into play. As I have said before, one of the things that New Hope’s live-in program was based on was the idea that being able to share honestly in a group of men, men who were safe, would be a way of helping us to lower our emotional walls. For the majority of us, it was the first time we had ever shared what was really going on inside of us with anyone. Again, speaking for myself, I was so shut down emotionally that the thought of making myself vulnerable to anyone was something that I would not normally even have considered. There was a steep learning curve for all of us, and as a result we had some very interesting meetings! As the men committed to continue, in spite of any mistakes we or others made, we began to learn what was appropriate and what was not. We learned how to work through any hurt or misunderstandings that occurred, and by doing so learned that they can actually strengthen a friendship. The reality of the situation was that we were learning things that we would have learned as boys growing up, but now most of us were in our forties or older.
One of the side effects, if you will, of defensive detachment, is emotional immaturity. There are things that can only be learned in the context of the dynamics that occur in a group setting. As children begin grow and to form friendships, or become part of a team, their interaction with peers challenges them on many different levels. Meeting these challenges gives them a sense of their place in the world of males. Instead of withdrawing, they face their fears and doubts, and continue to develop in their identity as males. They learn to control their emotions or at least temporarily hide them. It is a process of trial and error, and much of what they learn is taught to them by their peers, either overtly or subconsciously. Not only do they grow physically, they also grow emotionally.
For those of us who separated ourselves from that process, we remained children emotionally. When I came into the live-in program and God started to open up my understanding of what was going on inside of me, I became aware that when I thought about myself, the sense I had was that I was still a child. It is hard to put into words what I felt, but I did not feel like I was a forty-year-old man. I realized that I was responding to situations not as a man would, but as a child would.
A common trait among men with SSA is that we tend to be very egocentric, viewing the world primarily through how we feel and are affected by the circumstances that we find ourselves in. This tendency was frequently on display in the program once the honeymoon period was over, and things started to get real. It was one of the reasons that some of the men in the house started to complain about the structure of the program and began to question if they really wanted to go through what they would have to in order to learn how to control their sexual desires. Howard