7
Grappling with Gay and Lesbian Fantasies
When I was invited to be one of the keynote speakers at an Exodus International Conference, I was honored . . . but hesitant. After searching for the root of my anxiety, I realized that I wasn’t sure what kind of presentation to make to this particular audience. Exodus International is a ministry that focuses on equipping the church. Exodus also offers biblical guidance to individuals who are either dealing with or personally affected by homosexuality.
Not quite sure of what I had to offer, I finally decided to call the conference organizer, David, and be honest about my dilemma. I admitted, “I’m rather stumped as to what kind of message to craft. Are you aware that my testimony doesn’t include anything about homosexuality?”
David replied, “Shannon, we don’t want you to talk to us about homosexuality. We simply want you to be transparent, to share your personal story of sexual and relational struggles, along with how God helped you walk through your own process of healing. Teach us God’s intent for biblical sexuality and healthy relationships, what He desires for us all to enjoy with both the same and opposite sex!”
Now that I knew I could do. What I didn’t know, however, was that I wasn’t really going to teach. I was going to learn. Over a two-day period, I met some of the most wonderfully authentic people on the planet. There was no mask wearing, no posturing, no candy coating. No one hid his or her agenda in attending the conference. Many of the attendees once identified themselves as gay, but they didn’t want to be bound to that identity or struggle any longer. They sensed that freedom was possible, and they came hungry to learn, to grow, and to heal.
It was one of the most receptive audiences I have ever encountered. But again, I learned as much as (if not more than) they did. And the biggest nugget of truth and wisdom that I walked away with was that homosexuality isn’t just a cultural phenomenon or a social issue. After that conference, homosexuality had beautiful faces, names, and stories. Amazing stories.
NATURE VERSUS NURTURE
Before I share just a few of these people and their stories with you, let me make a disclaimer here. I know there is much debate about whether or not someone is born gay or culturally conditioned to become that way. The whole “nature versus nurture” debate has been going on even longer than I’ve been alive, and there are plenty of intelligent, respectable folks on both sides of this fence.
One is Louann Brizendine, a medical doctor and researcher and the best-selling author of a book called The Female Brain, in which she summarizes the following findings about the brains of both women and men:
• Same-sex attraction is estimated to occur in 5 to 10 percent of the female population.
• Men are twice as likely as women to be gay.
• Several family and twin studies provide clear evidence for a genetic component to both male and female sexual orientation.1
Based on Dr. Brizendine’s research evidence, she believes that homosexuality is in some people’s nature. Regardless of our theological views on homosexuality, we do not have enough scientific information to disprove this theory of some people being genetically predisposed to homosexuality.
Let’s add to the mix other opinions, such as that of Cynthia Nixon, who starred for years on the television show Sex and the City. In an interview with the New York Times, she stated that she wasn’t born gay, rather, “for me, it is a choice.”2 Another woman was recently on the radio talking about how she used to be a lesbian, but she’s now marrying a man. She explained, “The gay community completely supported me as long as I supported their agenda. But now that I’m debunking their myth that ‘if you’re gay, you’re gay; come out of the closet and stay that way,’ well, they’re not so supportive.” Many men who attended the Exodus International Conference echoed this sentiment. As long as they chose to be with a male partner, they were celebrated. As soon as they chose to leave that partner to find a wife and start a family, they were ostracized. But the fact that some previously gay people can choose an opposite-sex partner and find great happiness and sexual fulfillment is evidence that, for many, it is a choice.
Making a case for the nature versus nurture argument is certainly not on my agenda. My burden for writing this chapter is to help (1) people who are struggling to either avoid or break free from homosexual relationships and (2) the many women and men who have experienced (and been bewildered by) homosexual fantasies, even though they consider themselves to be very heterosexual beings. People such as:
• Monica, who, in her thirties, fears that she might be gay because her sexual dreams always have involved women rather than men and she is unable to come to orgasm with her husband unless she mentally entertains lesbian fantasies.
• Charlie, who views gay male pornography and wrestles with the urge to visit a massage parlor where male prostitutes offer a variety of other “services.”
• Gail, whose “masculine personality” led her to embrace a tomboy persona as a child and who has a bisexual identity as an adult.
There are many layers to homosexual fantasies. It is only as we peel back those layers, revealing more of the intimate details of an individual’s life, that we are able to identify the real root of someone’s sexual struggles.
PEELING BACK THE LAYERS
Understanding the deeper meanings behind homosexual fantasies is an incredibly complex process because our brains are incredibly complex creations. Contrary to popular belief, homosexuality isn’t about what happens between a man’s or woman’s legs. It’s about what happens between one’s ears. And what happens between the ears most likely started long before puberty.
Monica explained in our first session, “I deal with lesbian images while my husband is pleasuring me, and I hate this about myself! I feel really wrong for allowing these thoughts in my head. I have prayed and prayed for deliverance from this but still find it impossible to experience an orgasm any other way.”
As we began unpacking Monica’s earliest memories, she remembered her father frequently coming home from work in a foul frame of mind. “Everyone walked on eggshells when we knew Dad was in a bad mood!” she recalled. Occasionally her father would hit her mother across the face when arguments broke out, and Monica’s two older brothers usually took her by the hand and headed toward the backyard to play outside when this happened. It was their way of escaping the chaos and protecting their little sister from further violent outbursts.
But one day when Monica was six and her brothers were ten and twelve, they failed to protect her—not from their dad, but from a neighbor boy. He suggested they play hide-and-seek. Monica would be “it” first, and she’d count to twenty while lying on the bed with a pillow covering her face. Monica complied, but instead of running away to hide while she was counting, the neighbor boy slid his hand up her dress and forced his finger into her vagina. She squirmed and tried to scream, but suddenly more hands held her down and the pillow was pressed harder against her face to muffle her voice.
Monica doesn’t remember what happened next. Her brain obviously shut down to protect her from the gravity of the situation, but she distinctly remembers the horror of realizing that it was her own brothers who served as the neighbor boy’s accomplices.
Eight years later, when Monica was fourteen and her oldest brother was twenty, he committed suicide. She has no idea if guilt over what happened that day played any role in his decision to end his life. But one idea she did develop throughout these tumultuous younger years was that men were incredibly dangerous. They were angry, mean, violent, abusive creatures who couldn’t be trusted any farther than Monica could spit. Her father, her brothers, and her neighbor had all taught her well that girls were not safe in a boys’ world.
Therefore, in order for Monica to ever feel safe enough in her own mental space to reach a sexual climax, she couldn’t be in a boys’ world where she still felt vulnerable to danger and violence. She had to be in an all-girls’ world, where she was nurtured and safe.
Does this mean that Monica needs to leave her husband and succumb to the lure of lesbianism? Absolutely not. Her marriage to a man who respects and honors her, a husband who is tender with her sexually, has been one of the most healing relationships of her life. With her newfound understanding of where these lesbian fantasies originated, she feels more confident than ever that they only have as much power over her as she chooses to give them, which is very little.
Charlie’s Father Hunger
I first met Charlie when he was a teenager at a summer camp I was directing. He kept in contact throughout his college years and is still a friend today. He is an amazingly talented young man who loves God and his wife deeply, but like many of us, he has his own sexual dragons to slay.
He discovered pornography when he was in sixth grade, and he considered himself a full-blown addict by the time he was a freshman in high school. He was disgusted with himself for gravitating most often to exclusively male pornography. Although he’s never pursued a partner for a homosexual encounter, he has visited a male massage parlor, sometimes opting for more than just a back rub, other times refraining. “This is the one thing I hate about myself more than anything else!” he exclaims. “Why can’t I be drawn just to women like a ‘normal’ guy?”
The reality is that there is no such thing as “normal” when it comes to sex. And when we peel back the layers of Charlie’s childhood, his situation isn’t difficult to understand. When he was three, his father left home, leaving Charlie to be raised by his manic-depressive mom. Throughout the next fifteen years his mom would often leave the house in a rage, threatening never to return. Sometimes she stayed out all night or was gone two or three days in a row. Rather than coming home from school to a mom and dad who provided unconditional love and unwavering support, he lived in constant fear that he had been abandoned or would be soon.
His anger and loneliness drove him toward Internet porn, where he found the scenarios that most appealed to him were raw images of men releasing their sexual aggression in unconventional, uninhibited ways. It was like releasing the steam valve on a pressure cooker, providing some semblance of relief, if only for a few minutes. But then the weight of guilt and confusion would sink in even heavier than the anger he was trying to release. It became a vicious cycle.
I asked Charlie to pay attention to those moments when he felt most tempted either to access pornography or revisit the male massage parlor. What was happening? How was he feeling? What was his perception of what he needed at that moment? And might there be a better, less guilt-inducing way to cope with the situation?
He realized that his draw toward men for a sexual release (through porn or massage) was strongest when he felt over-whelmed or inadequate at work. He explained, “My boss is a really smart guy, and I want to impress him. But when that becomes a challenge, I feel like a failure. I feel like that little boy who wasn’t good enough to make his dad want to stick around and watch me grow up. And my mom taught me that women could never be fully relied upon. So I guess I’m wanting to run to another man to make me feel like a man—to fill the void my dad created when he left.”
“Is there any man on the planet who can fill that void, Charlie? Can another human being really make you feel like a man?” I asked.
Tears flowed freely down Charlie’s cheeks as he realized that he was chasing the intangible, pursuing the impossible. “No, but I don’t know what else to do!” he sobbed.
“Who created you as a man, Charlie?”
“God did,” he replied.
We went on to discuss what it would look like to let God heal the father-shaped hole in Charlie’s heart, to let God show him how to reparent himself so that he has his own well of affirmation and strength that he can draw from as needed, to let God teach him what it really means to be a man, and to let God help him carve out a whole new path for effectively managing his stress and anxiety (through exercise, manual labor, meditation, healthy male friendships, and marital sex) so that he didn’t have to keep trying the same fruitless things over and over again.
Charlie last reported that he hasn’t surfed for porn or visited the massage parlor in over three years. He and his wife now have a son of their own, and he’s determined to be the awesome dad he never had.
Gail’s Gender Confusion
Gail suspected she was “different” when she was in junior high. Her teachers commented repeatedly, “You’re as good at math and science as the boys!” Her PE coaches exclaimed, “We should make room for you on the sports teams, Gail! You throw a ball better than any boy in this school!”
Because she was very competitive and was intimidating to most male students, Gail wasn’t pursued by the boys the way the other girls were. She describes her mother as “Frumpy Fran” because she wasn’t into makeup or hairstyles or fashion at all; as a result Gail wasn’t a girly girl either. But her biggest issue with her mother was that she was a “codependent doormat” for her dad. “He wiped his feet all over her, smacking her around and demanding his way all the time. My mom walked around in silent submission just to keep the peace. I thought that if this is what marriage is like, I don’t want any part of it!”
In college Gail was assigned to a room with a girl named Candace, who seemed far more comfortable in her own feminine skin than Gail was. Gail just wished she could be as socially skilled as Candace, and she frequently looked to her for advice in matters of grooming and social interaction. Candace was also far more comfortable with her sexuality and decided to “help” Gail in that department, too, through lesbian experimentation. Though she knew this was wrong (this was a Bible college campus, by the way), the physical sensations of finally being accepted by someone were enough to make her press the Mute button on her conscience.
After several weeks Gail felt she must be in love. All of her hopes and dreams centered on being in Candace’s presence. But Candace had started seeing a guy on campus she had high hopes might be “the one,” so Candace started withdrawing sexually and emotionally from Gail. Eventually the relationship grew so tense that Candace asked to be reassigned to a different room. Gail was crushed and alone once again.
Unsure of her own sexual orientation, Gail also experimented with some guys on campus at group parties, where alcohol was involved, but those encounters were usually awkward and emotionally painful when the guys were willing to have sex with her but never willing to go out on a date with her. Feeling rejected by both genders, she simply didn’t know which direction she “fit” best.
During grad school, Gail worked in the library and developed a girl crush on one of the other campus employees. The older woman responded positively for a while, but she then humiliated Gail with a public accusation of sexual harassment. It was at this point that Gail decided that she was through with relationships altogether. The prospect of ever being rejected again was enough to take all of the wind right out of her sexual sails.
That was when she attended the Exodus International Conference that I mentioned at the opening of this chapter. Through this new social circle she was able to form relationships with other like-minded individuals, both men and women, who were also seeking to become better stewards of their sexuality. She is also attending a church where she sees many marriages that appear very different from that of her parents, and she has hope that she can overcome the lure of lesbianism and find a man who will make a great life mate . . . and who can throw a ball as well as she can.
“We all possess the power to hurt, but few the power to heal.”
—from the song “The Princess” by Jim Bailey
Recipe versus relationship
As we read stories such as Monica’s, Charlie’s, and Gail’s, we might try to identify the overcomer’s “recipe” when we seek to answer the question “How do I find freedom?” If only there was a formula that could be followed!
But because we are wounded in relationship, our healing will also be found in relationship with others. Finding someone (a counselor, life coach, spiritual leader, spouse, or friend) you can be gut-level honest with about even the most confusing and embarrassing parts of your sexual struggles is a vital part of that process. As long as your struggle remains between your ears, it holds a lot more power over you. Verbalizing it with someone who will love you unconditionally and cheer you on to victory is an incredible growth experience.
To put some tools in your communication tool belt, let’s explore some of the many possible reasons why same-sex relationships can seem so alluring.
MEN SEEKING MEN, WOMEN SEEKING WOMEN
If I had a dime for every woman who told me she was confused and bewildered by her own lesbian fantasies, I would be a very rich woman. This seems to be one of the most common struggles among Christian women today, especially with how glamorized lesbianism has become in our society. It has risen from gratuitous scenes in pornographic films to the mainstream media, with erotically positioned women appearing together on billboards, in magazines and movies, on television, and yes, all over the Internet.
With men, homosexuality is typically kept more on the “down low,” but one doesn’t have to look far to find a willing partner. In the words of one of my male friends, “Gay society welcomes you with such open arms. They make it so easy to fall down, and so hard to get back up!”
Whether in reality or fantasy, what is it that men are really looking for when they surf for gay porn, visit massage parlors or bathhouses, or seek a male lover? What is it that women are searching for as they watch girl-on-girl porn, visit a lesbian bar, or seek a female tryst?
First, let’s look at a few possibilities that could be applicable to both men and women:
• The “Rebel” Factor. As we emotionally separate from our families of origin, we often reject our parents’ spiritual and sexual values in an attempt to develop our own moral codes. If homosexuality was considered a big taboo, walking on that side of the street can satisfy one’s urge to be shockingly rebellious.
• The “Ghost” Principle. Many men and women with samesex fantasies have experienced a traumatic loss of a significant same-sex figure—through death, divorce, or emotional disconnection. Therefore, the homosexual fantasy is the brain’s way of re-creating the male-male intimacy or the female-female intimacy that was lost in the mother-daughter or father-son relationship, or in the sister-sister or brother-brother relationship if the loss or disconnection was more with a sibling than with a parent.
• The “Fix Me” Factor. When one grows up with a dysfunctional parental relationship, it’s easy to feel innately broken. The concept of having an older, wiser, same-sex partner who can “fix me” is the brain’s way of trying to right that wrong, and it can make fantasizing about that particular person sexually appealing.
• The “Cannibal” Effect. As mentioned in chapter 5, cannibals make meals out of people whom they admire and want to emulate. Similarly, humans are usually attracted to someone who possesses a strength or characteristic that they believe they need more of in their own lives. Sometimes this desire for the characteristic is mistaken as sexual desire for the person.
A few further possibilities that could explain a man’s pull toward other men are:
• The “Aggression” Effect. Because the male hormone testosterone contributes not just to sex drive but also to anger and aggression in men, many take out their anger (often toward emotionally absent fathers) in sexual ways toward other men.
• The “Punish Me” Principle. Because some men are subject to feeling an enormous amount of guilt and shame about their homosexual desires, they will often subject themselves to the pain and humiliation of being seduced or even raped by other men as some sort of punishment. This also creates a psychological absolution of their guilt if they were merely the “victims” of such sexual activities.
• The “No Strings” Factor. Men aren’t wired to be as relational as women, and because gay sex often takes place in casual, anonymous group settings (such as bathhouses where aggressive group sex is common), the gay community provides a way for men to be sexual without relational commitment.
Finally, here are a few valid reasons why the female mind would view another woman’s body as the object of her sexual fantasy:
• The “Pinnacle” Principle. It’s interesting how God created the heavens and earth, then the animals, then man, then woman, then retired from creating anything else! The female body, which has inspired more music, art, and literature than anything else in this world, is surely the pinnacle of God’s creation and, as such, is the object of many of our fantasies.
• The “3-D” Effect. Have you ever shopped for a greeting card and noticed that some just pop out from the racks because they are layered in a multidimensional manner? Or noticed how much more eye grabbing a 3-D movie is than a regular 2-D movie? Apply the same principle to the male and female bodies. The male body is beautiful, no doubt, but the curves of the female body definitely grab the eye of all human beings, not just men.
• The “Safe Refuge” Effect. When we fell and bumped our heads, made a bad grade, or had a fight with a friend, who did most of us run to? Mom. She was our safe refuge throughout most of life’s storms. And because sex is a major form of comfort for us as adults, our minds may naturally gravitate in a female’s direction when we seek the comfort of sexual arousal.
• The “Familiarity” Factor. Men are great providers and protectors, but women are usually the primary relators. Most of the face-to-face, eye-to-eye, voice-to-voice, skin-to-skin intimacy that we experience growing up is with our mothers, sisters, and female friends, and because human beings are drawn to the familiar, female intimacy is a rather natural comfort zone. In addition, a woman is more intimately familiar with the female body because that’s the skin she’s in, so same-sex fantasies may be a reflection of what she already knows, rather than what she wants more of.
• The “Danger/Default” Factor. When a woman is physically, sexually, or emotionally abused by a man, it’s easy for her brain to conclude, I’ll never feel safe with any man. By default, this sense of danger leaves only one gender in her mind with which she can be comfortable enough to explore her own sexuality—women.
Although these principles can help us make more sense out of same-sex attraction, we need to consider the bigger picture. Everything sexual looks rosy in our fantasies because that’s the mental portrait we paint, but is the homosexual lifestyle really as rewarding as it may occasionally appear in our minds?
EXPOSING THE REALITY OF HOMOSEXUALITY
I asked several gay men and lesbian women to tell me what the homosexual lifestyle is really like—all of the glamour, mystery, and fantasy aside. In addition to the obvious fears of contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted infections, and of societal rejection, responses included the following:
• Fear of relational failure: few homosexual relationships ever make it past the two-year mark.3
• Fear of being cheated on: both gay men and lesbian women are often unfaithful to their lovers. Many self-described “monogamous” homosexual couples also reported an average of three to five partners in the past year.4
• Alcohol and drug abuse: many use not just illicit sex but also excessive drinking and drugs to medicate their emotional pain. Approximately 25 percent to 33 percent of people in the homosexual lifestyle are alcoholics, compared to 7 percent in the general population.5
• Domestic violence: because many homosexuals come from broken or abusive homes, anger and hostility easily translate into physical abuse. According to one study, women are forty-four times more likely to be abused by a lesbian lover than a husband, and men are three hundred times more likely to be abused in a homosexual relationship than in a heterosexual marriage.6
• A relentless pursuit of “the one”: although a small percentage of homosexuals find a faithful lifetime partner, many will go through hundreds or even thousands of partners in search of relational satisfaction, which often seems elusive. One study reveals that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with five hundred or more partners, with 28 percent having one thousand or more sex partners.7
• The “lesbian bed death” phenomenon: the intensity of lesbian relationships is typically very high in the beginning but dwindles quickly and can evolve to having little or no sexual intimacy between them at all.8
• Higher depression and suicide rates: studies indicate that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. And those who are rejected by their families are up to nine times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.9
In the article “Gay Rights: The Facts Behind Homosexuality,” FaithFacts.org highlights the ravages of the lifestyle by examining these statistics and concluding that “homosexual behavior is marked by death, disease, disappointment, promiscuity, perversity, addiction, and misery.”10 Indeed, the social implications of choosing a gay lifestyle are minor compared to the physical, mental, and emotional torment one may face.
One of my coaching clients, Rick, who is now happily married to a wonderful woman, had identified himself for many years as gay. I asked Rick, “What led you into homosexuality?” His journey through childhood included an emotionally with-drawn father who was absent most of the time, early attempts at soothing his loneliness and isolation through masturbation, his mother’s “don’t do that” response, his pastor’s “let me do that for you” molestation, his resulting confusion about all things sexual and spiritual, and drugs, alcohol, and suicide attempts during his teen and early adult years.
I asked Rick, “What led you out?” In his response, Rick recalled his days at Bible college. He would masturbate in the shower in the morning, then go to chapel. He’d peek at pornography and masturbate again during his lunch hour, then go for his prayer walk and beg God’s forgiveness. Two hours later he’d be studying and feel the overwhelming urge to visit a male bathhouse on the outskirts of town. “I could have sex with five men that evening and still feel the need to masturbate myself to sleep!” he admitted. “The insatiability of it all was absolutely maddening! Sheer lust coursed through my veins most of the time, burning so strong that it could make me nauseous until I got a sexual release. I didn’t want to do any of those things, but I felt as if I would never be able to concentrate on anything until I’d scratched that itch. So I kept scratching, which made the itch even worse. I realized that starving these desires was the only way I’d ever master them.”
Fortunately Rick did master his desires. It has been more than fifteen years since he acted out sexually, and he says physical intimacy with another man is the last thing in the world he wants now. What are the first things he wants? To draw closer to his heavenly Father and to his earthly father, who has had a major life transformation; to be the best husband and dad to his wife and children; and to help other men recognize (and heal) the roots of their same-sex desires.
THE LURE OF BEING TRULY GAY
There has been much talk lately about how interesting the word gay is. The 1890s were called the “Gay Nineties,” but one hundred years later, in 1990, that expression meant something entirely different. We’ve sung, “Don we now our gay apparel” in the Christmas song “Deck the Halls,” and when we are with the Flintstones, we know “we’ll have a gay old time!” But children now snicker at those lyrics.
The word gay used to mean “happy, merry, lively, cheerful, joyous, and jovial.” Yet these words do not describe the gay lifestyle that so many have told me about. In fact, most homosexuals who feel certain that they were “born this way and can’t help it” will also insist, “I would never choose this!” Their demeanor is often the antonym of gay—solemn, joyless, depressed, and melancholy.
Is there anything the church can do—anything we can do— to expose the deeper meaning behind homosexual thoughts in the minds of those who romanticize and fantasize about being gay? Rather than point an accusatory finger at them, perhaps we can point them to God, who is the source of true happiness, merriment, joy, and gaiety.
Roxane Hill, a participant in my B.L.A.S.T. mentorship group for aspiring writers and speakers, recently gave a speech in which she shared a story she heard on the radio about a medical team during wartime. The team’s responsibility was to go from hospital bed to hospital bed and label patients’ files with either “medical hope” or “no medical hope.”
As they reviewed one man’s chart and labeled him “no medical hope,” the patient responded, “No, my name is John.” One of the nurses later went back and changed John’s label, scratching out the no and changing his status to “medical hope.”
We must do the same thing. We can no longer look at people identified by homosexuality or dealing with same-sex attractions, shake our heads, and declare, “There’s no hope for them.” Like John, these individuals have names, faces, and often painful life experiences and, like all of us, aren’t beyond God’s ability to restore, heal, and transform.
Rather than allow our brothers and sisters to grapple with their gay and lesbian fantasies alone, in shame and secrecy, let’s give them hope. Let’s be safe sounding boards. Let’s help them expose the deeper meanings behind their sexual thoughts and show them in both word and deed that the body of Christ does care for them . . . that we care for them.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN:
TRACING THE ROOTS OF SAME-SEX FANTASIES
When I asked for testimonies from people who struggled with same-sex attraction, I was inundated with responses—enough to write a completely separate book. Poring over each one of them carefully, I decided that these two had to be shared.
When Mama Ain’t Happy . . .
William (age twenty-seven) writes:
After taking a college psychology class, I suspected that my adoptive mother never bonded with me in the way that she did with her biological children. I always felt like the “odd man out” in our house.
My dad worked a lot, and my mom seemed to be stressed all the time and took that stress out on me. I was the oldest, so I had to work hard to help her manage, but there was no pleasing her, no measuring up to her standards of perfection. I couldn’t make my bed right. I couldn’t fold the laundry right. I felt like a total screwup. I really did try, but I learned early in life that there was no pleasing a woman, at least not my mom. And because I could never please her, I was always being physically punished or verbally berated.
My dad, however, felt the need to compensate for my mother’s coldness and brutality. He was incredibly patient and kind, and would sometimes crawl into my bed to tuck me in. I knew that he loved me and felt my pain, and I felt really safe as long as he was home to protect me.
The thing that’s been most bewildering to me as a teenager and young adult is my fantasies of having a gay lover. Although I’ve struggled for many years with looking at guy-on-guy pornography on occasion, I’ve not physically acted out on this overwhelming desire. Fortunately, I’ve just never had the opportunity and have managed to avoid places like gay massage parlors where I knew I could find relief with some sort of random encounter. Even if I was willing to “go there,” I’d want a real relationship, not a one-night stand. I don’t think I was born with this desire. I think it was cultivated in me throughout a very long and painful childhood.
My biggest fear is that these fantasies will never go away . . . or that I might act out on them someday and live to regret it. I’m just grateful that I know God well enough to be assured that He’d love me just the same, even if I were to choose this path. He understands my pain more than I do. My other fear is that if I get married to a woman, she’ll either discover my dark secret or turn out to be just as cold and callous as my mom. I don’t think I could survive that.
For the parents who are reading this, I don’t want dads to think that they shouldn’t be affectionate toward their sons. They definitely should be. But mothers need to be sensitive to how much boys want to be a hero to the women in their lives, even to their moms. When we feel like zeros instead of heroes in a mom’s eyes, we easily calculate that women simply aren’t a soft place to land.
However, there are many women who, because of unique family dynamics, consider women a very soft place to land. Cindy is one of those women.
Cindy’s Search for a Soft Place to Land
Cindy (age thirty-one, married with one child) writes:
I was nineteen when I walked into a friend’s living room and saw her older brother watching porn on their big-screen television. What I recall most about that incredibly awkward moment was that the porn stars were both female, and they were having sex with each other, which was something I didn’t even know women could do.
Unable to get that scene out of my mind, I sought out similar scenarios on the Internet, masturbating to those images and being astounded at the intensity of my orgasm. I began to wonder if I could be a lesbian because it was over-whelmingly more pleasurable to envision being intimate with another woman than it was with a man.
I never told anyone about this experience, and within a few years I was married to a great guy and we had a beautiful baby girl. We were attending a church where the women’s ministry leader, Lydia, was this really beautiful woman— inside and out—and she was great to take me under her wing. She was maybe twelve years older than me, and she seemed very open to discussing anything that was on my mind, so I told her about my earlier experiences. I also confessed to her that in order to reach orgasm with my husband, I usually entertained lesbian fantasies in my head.
In hindsight, there may have been a small part of me that hoped she would identify with this issue and provide a safe relationship where I could “explore” whether I was really a lesbian or not. After all, that’s what I’d been encouraged to do by the media, especially The Oprah Show, which frequently featured adult women or men finally “coming out of the closet” to “own their homosexuality.”
Fortunately, Lydia was more trustworthy than that and didn’t take advantage of my vulnerability at all. She just assured me that sexual confusion is relatively normal and asked a series of questions over the course of several meetings together to try to help me make sense of it all. We discussed my relationships with my mom, dad, and siblings. I told her about how my father was very emotionally distant and verbally abusive to everyone in the house if he was having a bad day. On a few occasions, he flew off the handle and hit one of us but would always break down and cry afterward, begging our forgiveness. We just learned to walk on eggshells around him while my mother made excuses for his behavior and assured us that he really did love us but didn’t always know how to show it.
My mom was very attentive and adored her children, and I loved her deeply. I still do. But in 1995, she changed—we all changed—when the world as we’d always known it came crashing down around us.
I was fourteen, and my younger sister, Penny, was ten. Penny was spending the night with some close friends. Their house caught fire in the middle of the night when lightning struck their roof. Everyone inside was burned to death, including my sister.
We all tried to cope as best we could, but my mother was never the same fun-loving, affectionate person. She was more like a walking zombie, staring into space while putting one foot in front of the other, assuring everyone she was fine, but completely oblivious to the needs of anyone else around her.
As I shared these stories with Lydia, it became crystal clear why lesbian fantasies would invade my mind on occasion. She explained that when we’re experiencing orgasm, our brain has a way of “righting all wrongs,” or “soothing our pain.” We orchestrate events in our imagination to line up with what our soul longs for most, and I’ve spent years longing for my little sister to have survived that fire, and longing for my mother to snap out of her grief and return to being the woman that I felt so safe with and cherished by.
In light of these connections, I’ve never again questioned my sexual orientation. I’m a heterosexual woman who has a great husband and a great sex life, and even if lesbian fantasies creep in on occasion to distract me from the pain I’ll always carry around in my heart, that’s okay. I control them. They do not control me.
We are the captains of our sexuality ships. We may not always have control over what thoughts initially come into our minds when we are sexually aroused or understand why they include certain scenarios, but we have complete control over how much energy we want to give them. We decide which ones we pay attention to and which ones get ignored. We determine which direction to take at every turn, and with God’s help, we have the power to stay completely on course as we navigate the waters of healthy sexuality.