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Hello everyone. I appreciate the welcome from those of you who responded to my post. I’ll try to respond to a few things. Tyred, “Feelings and attractions are often fleeting and need not be the foundation for a person's identity.” This is a concept that I’m well familiar with. As my former pastor used to say, “Feelings are real, but they are not reliable.” If we all gave in to every feeling we experience, we wouldn’t even be able to function in the world. I agree that sexual attraction doesn’t need to define who I date or marry, but I just don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t want to end up hurting someone who could’ve had a better life if they had chosen someone other than me. The problem is that nothing is certain anymore, and I don’t know what path to take. I’m open to anything, so I’m not ruling anything out, but I still feel like I’m stranded in the middle of the ocean without a map. Manstuprator, I appreciate your passion. “You have absorbed "the child sexual abuse narrative" and now it's in your blood. You need a transfusion! Get that poison out of your mind, and out of your body!” If you’re implying that I believe that child sexual abuses exists, well, I think we would all agree on that since rape certainly exists for adults and therefore must certainly exist for children as well. If you are someone who argues that it’s possible for children to consent, then I’m not sure how I feel about that. Children are obviously very impressionable and have very little life experience. My gut instinct is to say that once sexual function is enabled, then that’s nature’s way of giving us a clue. But the practical realities of living in the society that we live in means that I would never live that out. Errant, “Does it matter whether you are "born gay" or not? Who's to say what desires you're supposed to have or who you are "supposed to be." If you truly have no interest in women (and I'm not saying you should rule it out), what's wrong with trying something different?” It matters if someone else decided to alter the course of my life without my consent. The removal of my agency is what is terrifying to me. So the problem with “trying it” is that I feel like I would be choosing to continue giving up my agency to the person who abused me. I hope that makes sense. “You say the abuse wasn't serious, but you also say you have trauma. You might want to sort that out. Also, I'm not going to say that trauma can't have unexpected effects on the way you relate to the world, including upon your sexuality, but if you really are over-reliant on structure, then stories and narratives are also a kind of structure than you might be clinging to. Could this view about your trauma be just something you're clinging to in order to try to feel like things make sense? And even if it does play a role, that doesn't mean simply being gay is mistaken. Not every unintended path is a problem. Maybe don't be in a rush to set things in stone.” Yeah, the abuse was not traumatic in the sense that I don't have strong negative emotions associated with the literal actions that happened to me, but I still believe that it affected certain outcomes in my life, particularly my sexual development. I am definitely someone who relies on narrative and structure. I love stories and like to see the world through stories. The question you asked about clinging to trauma to make the world make sense resonates with me. The problem is that I will never know the truth about how what happened affected me so there’s no way to know whether or not I’m putting too much importance on it. I’m willing to accept the possibility that I’m relying on it so that everything makes sense, but how would I know if that’s even true? That being said, I do think that the core of my sexual attraction is due to my personality. As I heard it said once, “Genetics loads the gun, but trauma pulls the trigger.” There are many men who were sexually abused to a much greater degree than I was who don’t turn out “gay.” Personality and relationships to other same-sex individuals seems to be the common denominator that decides what happens. But you still can’t have one without the other: trauma and genetics. I also agree that I am putting way too much effort into worrying what my parents think. But I just don’t want to disappoint them. Honey, Thank you for your cryptic and scary post. “In a few years of continuing to reseach and to learn from expereince you will realize what you have to do” What do I have to do?? lol Also, I know that I don’t have to give up on religion. I still go to church with my parents, and I plan on having no further conversations about religion with my mother because those always go terribly. I’m not angry at the church or anyone in it, but I don’t know if I can devote my life to something that I don’t believe is true. Sure, I could continue to go to church just for the community, but that would make me feel like a selfish fraud. I don’t know what to do. Anyway, thanks everyone. |