Alan's Story

(Alan has been reading the blog for a few weeks and decided to write to me. With his permission, I've forwarded his story.)

 * * * * *

I have been enjoying the blog posts and comments from the guys. It is very encouraging hearing the victories of these men and sobering knowing they also have struggles as well.

My story goes like this:

I was molested when I was only 4 years old by a male family member. At the time I was too young too know what it was and that it was wrong, but it affected my life tremendously. It wasn't until I was in my late teens that I remembered what happened to me. I struggled with same-sex attraction and couldn't understand why. I prayed and I had a flashback to my childhood when and how it happened.

I only recall it happening once but its effects lived on. From a little boy I was confused about my sexuality. I wanted to be a girl and dressed up in my grandmother's clothing. I was often teased and called all manner of names, e.g. sissy. It was a painful childhood for me. I felt rejected by my peers, family members, and men. I never felt I was manly enough. I still struggle with that. Right now I feel a sense of sadness but, at the same time, appreciate being able to share my experience. 

I was exposed to pornography at an early age, and it has been a struggle since then. I struggle with same-sex attraction, gay porn, masturbation, and other psychological effects from my abuse. I want to please God with my life and overcome my struggles, but I continue to fail.

I desire to get married and have children. I've tried seeking help from different individuals, but it continues to disappoint me. I pray that God sends someone that will truly understand my predicament and help me through it. The person I thought was going to help me started to but abandoned the process. That was hard for me. It's such a sensitive area.

I need someone to help me, but at the same time I'm tired of people disappointing me regarding this area of my life. 

Thanks, Cec, for your blog and being courageous enough to share your story and to all the guys who have shared theirs. I pray that God helps me to overcome this fully!

Porn

(This is an encore post from "J".)

An addiction to pornography was one of the effects of my early childhood sexual abuse. The women in the pictures were fascinating, though I had no clue why they were unclothed. My brother would “show me” what the women did as we looked at the pictures. The natural result was a strong sexual confusion on my part. For years, I thought I was a woman.

I now live a heterosexual lifestyle and have been married for three decades. But through these years I have found myself struggling with this addiction. Of course, I felt the typical shame and self-loathing after indulging. The more I watched the more I want to do it.

I have come to understand many things about the roots of my addiction. The primary root is the yearning to feel needed. The abuse scarred me deeply and has manifested itself in me at times as an irrational compulsion for gay porn. This is what is called “acting out” for me. I acted out the early homosexual abuse through porn, compulsive masturbation, and a few gay encounters.

 Acting out in any way is destructive emotionally and spiritually, but especially to my marriage and to my work. When I sense a temptation to indulge in porn, I try to remember that this feeling is strong, but irrational. The porn will never satisfy me in the deepest way and it can never heal what hurts the most—my broken heart.

Lies I Believed

(This is an encore post from "J".)

Among the worst of the many lies I have believed about myself is that the abuse in my childhood was my fault. It's common among victims to believe they brought the abuse on themselves or caused it to happen. I've learned that the abuse was the sick choice of the abuser and not my doing.

I was about 16 before I understood that men had sex with women and not just with other men or boys. I knew that men liked to look at women, but the abuse was so pervasive in my life that I didn’t understand the basic physiology of the human body.

Gender confusion and identity struggles haunt me to this day. A therapist had to tell me I had been abused. It didn't occur to me that something was wrong with the people who touched me and used me.

The lie that I caused those broken people to have sexual contact with me has affected me throughout my life. The sexual confusion alone is devastating, but there are many more consequences that victims experience because of that distorted belief. Here are a few of mine:

* A sense of chronic failure; 

* The feeling that I have no control over my emotions or my body; 

* Problems making decisions;
* Compulsive behavior.

The best thing that has happened is gaining the understanding that I did not cause the abuse—not any of it. I participated at some level because I didn’t know that it was abuse or that I was being taken advantage of.

I was a child. I didn’t understand what was happening. It was not my fault.

Questions and Answers (Part 4 of 7)

(an encore post by Cecil Murphey)

"If I was abused by a man and it felt good, does that make me gay?"

This is the question most men don't ask aloud. I want to mention that it's natural for sexual abuse to feel good. When someone stimulates our sexual organs, that feels good—that's a natural phenomenon. Tyler Perry, speaking of his abuse, said, "My body betrayed me."

One authority said that sexual identity is established around age 2 or 3—and I pass that on because I'm not a psychologist. But there seems to be no research to prove that being abused makes the victim a homosexual.

Some men become sexually compulsive with women—which I see as part of their unresolved issues. That's a way of shouting, "See! I'm not gay."

One abuse survivor has only one wife but nine children. He said, "If anyone tried to call me gay, I could point to my kids and prove them wrong."

Most of the abused men I've met are heterosexual. My guess is that the therapist was probably right about the formation of sexual identity.

What Does It Mean to Be a Man?

(an encore post by Cecil Murphey)

That's a frequent question from men who were sexually molested in childhood. "What does it mean to be a man—a real man?"

We have cultural attitudes and expectations within our own social communities about masculinity. But no matter how it's said, most of us survivors face uncertainty about our manhood. Many of us feel challenged and unsure about our masculinity. We say to ourselves, "If I were a real man, I would (or I wouldn't). . ."

For example, he was a victim of sexual abuse, so he can't be a real man, because true men are never victims. If he thinks of the word victim when he thinks of himself, he may struggle or be aware of something he says that will make others think he's not a real male.

If he cries, his friends may laugh at him, imply that's he's a sissy or behaves like a girl. Maybe he's not athletic or doesn't enjoy watching football. Or perhaps he's too thin or too fat—almost anything can cause him to struggle with deeper issues.

It's sad but too often it's a silent, inner battle he can't share with others. He feels that to talk freely opens him to further criticism.

Years ago my friend Charlie said he played with paper dolls. He was an only child and the dolls entertained him. One day he was with a friend and they saw two girls playing with paper dolls. "Only girls play with real dolls or paper dolls."

"After that," Charlie said, "I played only in my room and made sure no one else would find them." He later said that he started dating girls at age sixteen, and even though he liked girls, later married, and was never involved in any homosexual relationships, he still wonders if he's really a man.

"How do I know if I'm a real man?" he asked.

What would you say to Charlie or to any man like him? Please email me if you'd like to respond, and I'll post all the comments at one time.

"This Is Hell."

(This is another transparent, courageous email from Lee Willis.)

I've read the posts and could feel a connection. It was reassuring to read that I am not alone in my struggles and feelings. I walk this journey by myself since there is really no one to talk to.

I noticed the other day how church is very difficult. I look at the men in the church and I feel like a freak and an outcast. I know I don’t fit in because I haven’t acknowledged my own sexuality and gender.

Being sexually abused by men, I shut off that part of me. I didn’t relate when I was growing up. I thought when I became an adult that it would go away, but I still feel like I’m the nothing on the playground. So I question my own masculinity and wonder who I am and what I am.

This isn’t life. This isn’t joy. This is hell. How do I endure each day? I realized that I have shut off my feelings. I put on an act for everyone so I can fit in, but it’s not me. Sometimes when I get brave, I say a little something about being abused, but no one wants to know. I don’t think they know how to respond.

Some people know I suffer from PTSD, but they are not interested in how and why. So the lonely kid on the playground grows up to still be the lonely kid on the playground still wanting to be like all the other guys, but knowing something is really wrong. Knowing I’m just a freak.

Porn

(This post comes from John Joseph.)

An addiction to pornography was one of the effects of my early childhood sexual abuse. The women in the pictures were fascinating, though I had no clue why they were unclothed. My brother would “show me” what the women did as we looked at the pictures. The natural result was a strong sexual confusion on my part. For years I thought I was a woman.

I now live a heterosexual lifestyle and have been married for three decades. But through these years I have found myself struggling with this addiction. Of course I feel the typical shame and self-loathing after indulging. The more I watch the more I want to do it. As an adult, the people I see in the pornography still elicit in me the same feelings of being needed that I felt as a child.

I have come to understand many things about the roots of my addiction. The primary root is the yearning to feel needed. The abuse scarred me deeply and has manifested itself in me at times as an irrational compulsion for gay porn. This is what is called “acting out” for me. I acted out the early homosexual abuse through porn, compulsive masturbation, and a few gay encounters.

Acting out in any way is destructive emotionally and spiritually, but especially to my marriage and to my work. When I sense a temptation to indulge in porn, I try to remember that this feeling is strong, but irrational. The porn will never satisfy me in the deepest way and it can never heal what hurts the most—my broken heart.

Porn

(This post comes from "J".)

An addiction to pornography was one of the effects of my early childhood sexual abuse. The women in the pictures were fascinating, though I had no clue why they were unclothed. My brother would “show me” what the women did as we looked at the pictures. The natural result was a strong sexual confusion on my part. For years, I thought I was a woman.

I now live a heterosexual lifestyle and have been married for three decades. But through these years I have found myself struggling with this addiction. Of course, I felt the typical shame and self-loathing after indulging. The more I watched the more I want to do it.

I have come to understand many things about the roots of my addiction. The primary root is the yearning to feel needed. The abuse scarred me deeply and has manifested itself in me at times as an irrational compulsion for gay porn. This is what is called “acting out” for me. I acted out the early homosexual abuse through porn, compulsive masturbation, and a few gay encounters. 

 Acting out in any way is destructive emotionally and spiritually, but especially to my marriage and to my work. When I sense a temptation to indulge in porn, I try to remember that this feeling is strong, but irrational. The porn will never satisfy me in the deepest way and it can never heal what hurts the most—my broken heart.

Lies I’ve Believed

(This post comes from "J".)

Among the worst of the many lies I have believed about myself is that the abuse in my childhood was my fault. It's common among victims to believe they brought the abuse on themselves or caused it to happen. I've learned that the abuse was the sick choice of the abuser and not my doing.

I was about 16 before I understood that men had sex with women and not just with other men or boys. I knew that men liked to look at women, but the abuse was so pervasive in my life that I didn’t understand the basic physiology of the human body.

Gender confusion and identity struggles haunt me to this day. A therapist had to tell me I had been abused. It didn't occur to me that something was wrong with the people who touched me and used me.

The lie that I caused those broken people to have sexual contact with me has affected me throughout my life. The sexual confusion alone is devastating, but there are many more consequences that victims experience because of that distorted belief. Here are a few of mine:

* A sense of chronic failure; 

* The feeling that I have no control over my emotions or my body; 

* Problems making decisions;
* Compulsive behavior.

The best thing that has happened is gaining the understanding that I did not cause the abuse—not any of it. I participated at some level because I didn’t know that it was abuse or that I was being taken advantage of.

I was a child. I didn’t understand what was happening. It was not my fault.

Lies I Believed (by Dann Youle)

I believed that somewhere out there really was a "perfect" family. With "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Leave It To Beaver." Heck, "The Andy Griffith Show" perpetuated it as well. Even though there were no alcoholics in my family of origin, and even though abuse didn't happen overtly in my family, I knew we didn't have the perfect family.

I was always the "good boy," but even that wasn't enough. The big lie I believed was that I would never be a man. Having been abused sexually and discarded by my grandpa, struggling with same-sex attraction, not receiving the love and affirmation from my father the way I needed to, I realize that at 45 I still don't always feel like I'm a man!

I know I am a man—a real man—and I'm learning to define myself the way that God sees me. The American ideal of a man I'm not, and I'm finally learning that that's OK.

For the longest time, I couldn't move forward in life because I felt like I didn't have what it takes to have real "masculine initiative" and do the things I know I'm called to do. I'm still learning and have a long way to go, but at least I've started back to school, and I know I can accomplish all God has for me.

It's a great feeling: I'm truly the man God has called me to be and I am "living into that" more and more.

Secrecy, Shame, and Self-Hatred

This comes from an anonymous reader.

All that happened to me as a child was cloaked in secrecy. The abusive sexual activity happened in the dark behind closed doors. It wasn’t acknowledged or discussed even though it was the most consuming factor in my young life.

I lived for sex. I was active with men and women before I was sixteen years old and led a highly promiscuous life. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have sex many times a day with multiple partners.

In my recovery, I now recognize that the activity I engaged in was my attempt to cover the shame I felt from my own early childhood sexual abuse. Acting out began to feel normal and part of my identity, thus I cloaked my shame in the very activity that caused it.

The ultimate result of my acting out has been self-hatred. I look back on nearly five decades of wasting myself chasing “love” that could never exist in lust, pornography, and acting out, and I hate myself.

Part of my healing is to realize that secrecy and shame have fueled my self-hatred. The desire to be known, to be loved, and to have a healthy relationship is natural. The secrecy, shame, and self-hatred aren't natural, but were forced on me.

--Anonymous

Coping as a Child

This comes from an anonymous reader.

“Get your hands out of your pants!” is one of the first things I remember hearing my mother say to me as a child. What she didn’t know is that I had seen my father masturbating in the bathtub and that I had discovered my own genitals. I wouldn’t understand for decades how this experience would shape my own sexuality and become the root of sexual addiction, pain, and dysfunction in my life.

Although allowing me to see him may have been an innocent mistake on my father’s part, it was but a precursor to a decade of sexual abuse that I would experience from other trusted relatives.

As a child, I coped with those repeated traumas by participating in the abuse, looking for value and self-esteem by being important to someone else in inappropriate ways.

As an adult, this coping mechanism no longer works and leaves me empty, frustrated, and alone.

Part of my recovery work is through finding healthy ways to cope with my anxiety and the residual pain of childhood sexual abuse. The lust I feel for men is really just a cry from my soul to feel okay about myself and to connect with someone on a deeper level. That hopeless feeling deep down inside is the longing to have what I didn’t have as a child—a safe and healthy family.

--Anonymous

Questions and Answers (Part 7 of 7)

"Can Women Rape Boys?"

Being abused by women happens—more than we'd like to think. Sometimes it's a female relative (including mothers). Too many adults can't believe that a woman would do such a thing. But they do.

A female relative molested me. On this blog we have Jason Rovenstine's story of a female babysitter who raped him when he was eight years old. There are others. The story of then 34-year-old schoolteacher Mary Kay LeTourneau had sexual relationships with Villie Fualaau, who was then 13. That made national news. A jury found her guilty of sexual assault.

Abuse is terrible and it seems even worse when the perp is female. The most horrendous abuse is when the mother is the perpetrator. As the boy learns about masculinity and maleness, he can't understand what is normal. Something terrible (and often unwanted) was done to him by a woman, and society says he's to love women.

That female molestation becomes his initiation into adult manhood. It will scar him in some way such as making him hate women or believe that the only role for women is sexual.

Questions and Answers (Part 4 of 7)

"If I was abused by a man and it felt good, does that make me gay?"

This is the question most men don't ask aloud. I want to mention that it's natural for sexual abuse to feel good. When someone stimulates our sexual organs, that feels good—that's a natural phenomenon. Tyler Perry, speaking of his abuse, said, "My body betrayed me."

One authority said that sexual identity is established around age 2 or 3—and I pass that on because I'm not a psychologist. But there seems to be no research to prove that being abused makes the victim a homosexual.

Some men become sexually compulsive with women—which I see as part of their unresolved issues. That's a way of shouting, "See! I'm not gay."

One abuse survivor has only one wife but nine children. He said, "If anyone tried to call me gay, I could point to my kids and prove them wrong."

Most of the abused men I've met are heterosexual. My guess is that the therapist was probably right about the formation of sexual identity.

What Does It Mean to Be a Man?

That's a frequent question from men who were sexually molested in childhood. "What does it mean to be a man—a real man?"

We have cultural attitudes and expectations within our own social communities about masculinity. But no matter how it's said, most of us survivors face uncertainty about our manhood. Many of us feel challenged and unsure about our masculinity. We say to ourselves, "If I were a real man, I would (or I wouldn't). . ."

For example, he was a victim of sexual abuse, so he can't be a real man, because true men are never victims. If he thinks of the word victim when he thinks of himself, he may struggle or be aware of something he says that will make others think he's not a real male.

If he cries, his friends may laugh at him, imply that's he's a sissy or behaves like a girl. Maybe he's not athletic or doesn't enjoy watching football. Or perhaps he's too thin or too fat—almost anything can cause him to struggle with deeper issues.

It's sad but too often it's a silent, inner battle he can't share with others. He feels that to talk freely opens him to further criticism.

Years ago my friend Charlie said he played with paper dolls. He was an only child and the dolls entertained him. One day he was with a friend and they saw two girls playing with paper dolls. "Only girls play with real dolls or paper dolls."

"After that," Charlie said, "I played only in my room and made sure no one else would find them." He later said that he started dating girls at age sixteen, and even though he liked girls, later married, and was never involved in any homosexual relationships, he still wonders if he's really a man.

"How do I know if I'm a real man?" he asked.

What would you say to Charlie or to any man like him? Please email me at cec_haraka (at) msn.com if you'd like to respond, and I'll post all the comments at one time.