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from Interviews/Testimonials
Client Describes Change Process
We have received permission to reprint the following letter, sent to
a NARTH referral therapist by his client.
"Before I began reparative therapy, I felt trapped in an identity I had
not chosen and did not want. I had homosexual thoughts and feelings,
and occasionally engaged in sexual acts with other men, and I was very
unhappy with myself. I hated my homosexuality. I wanted the intimacy
and stability of heterosexual marriage, with a wife and children of my
own, but my sexual feelings toward women were extremely weak compared to
my desires for sex with men. By the time I reached my early thirties,
the vast majority of my sexual experiences (including my very first
genital encounter as a fifteen-year-old), had been with other males.
"For years I had kidded myself that I was bisexual, even though I had
had almost no sexual contact with women. Ironically, it was only after
experiencing heterosexual coitus in my mid-twenties that I began to
confront my homosexuality; because my heterosexual experiences were
vastly more satisfying than any of my homosexual experiences had been, I
began to question my sexual priorities. Over the next several years, I
had only very limited (and invariably unsatisfying) sexual contact with
men.
"Then, as I entered my thirties, I began to make minor breakthroughs in
understanding my sexual identity. Concern about a lack of physical
fitness led me to begin swimming regularly at the aquatic center at the
university where I worked, and my experience of being naked around other
men led paradoxically to a lessening of my homosexual desires. An
unexpected friendship with a star member of the school's baseball team
allowed me to recognize in myself some of the masculine strengths that I
saw and admired in my new friend. I realized, too, that no one in my
family had even encouraged me to be athletic, and I began to understand
that my lack of involvement in sports had robbed me of a vital masculine
camaraderie in youth. I knew that the lack of this masculine influence
had contributed to my state of sexual confusion.
"My work in therapy (and reparative therapy is work) clarified
and reinforced what I had begun to discover on my own, and taught me a
great deal more about who I am and how I got to be that way. I began to
see my confusion about who I am as an adult man in the world. I learned
the following: that I have problems asserting my needs and expectations
in relationships, especially with men, and that I have a tendency to be
passive, and to retreat from the challenges posed by those
relationships. I also have a fear of being vulnerable that results from
my sense of having been betrayed as a boy (by other boys, my parents, my
siblings). Also, this "narcissistic injury" has given me a tendency to
be self-centered, a tendency that manifests itself particularly in
excessive self-pity and hypersensitivity to criticism--especially from
other males. Through therapy, I began to recognize how much difficulty
I have had establishing and maintaining intimate nonsexual relationships
with other men, especially within my peer group.
"At the same time, I've learned that I have difficulty trusting women
because of negative feelings toward my own mother, who is classically
manipulative, controlling, and domineering, and with whom I was
unnaturally close, especially during my adolescence. Finally, I've
learned that I have been afraid of facing adult responsibilities--again
because I was rarely (if ever) encouraged to think of myself as a man
capable of growing into the responsibilities of manhood.
"When I began reparative therapy I took on the task of growing from a
wounded little boy to a whole (and heterosexual) man. In my
relationship with my therapist I have directly received the masculine
mentoring that I needed, but did not get as a child. More important,
the therapy has equipped me to receive that mentoring from other men; it
has given me the mental tools and the encouragement I have needed to
reach out and connect nonsexually with other men.
"One of the primary avenues to finding this connectedness with other men
and with my own dormant masculinity has been through sports. Within a
couple of months of beginning reparative therapy, I joined the local
branch of the YMCA and began playing basketball twice a week with a
group of guys. Because of my low skill level (whatever talent I have
for sports had never been developed), I had to overcome a lot of
discouragement at first. But the experience of overcoming, of
persevering through adversity rather than falling back into passivity,
has been a crucial part of the therapy.
"That I have any athletic talent at all has come as a big surprise. But
the biggest surprise for me has been how much I've come to enjoy playing
basketball with the guys. What started out as a therapeutic chore has
become a great joy. The reality that I am in fact 'one of the guys' is
slowly sinking in, and I feel most connected with my true, masculine
self when I am caught up in the here-and-now of athletic activity.
"Since I've been in therapy, my homosexual thoughts and feelings have
decreased significantly both in frequency and in intensity. While I had
already been celibate for a year and a half before I entered therapy,
the therapy has made celibacy much less of a struggle. When I have
sexual fantasies, they are almost always of sex with a woman, not
another man. This is not to say that I'm completely cured: the
homosexual feelings still creep in once in a while, but they have lost
the compelling edge that they used to have. Whatever desire I might
have to get sexual with another guy is now outweighed by my knowledge
that this desire is false, and that such an encounter would fail to
satisfy me deeply or lastingly.
"For the first time in my life I have a number of good, intimate,
nonsexual friendships with men. In fact, most of my friendships now are
no longer with women, but with men-- and I am actually more comfortable
in my friendships with men than in those old platonic, feminine
friendships. I have begun dating women, and am learning now how to
relate comfortably with them as a man. I still struggle with trust
issues with women, but I'm finding that as I learn to be more real with
women (and as I work through my anger toward the women in my family), it
becomes easier and easier for me to reveal my true self to women.
"As I approach the end of my first year in treatment I recognize that I
still have work to do. But my progress so far gives me great hope for
the future. The months since I began reparative therapy have been the
happiest and most fulfilled time in my life."
Updated: 8 February 2008
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