Development of Same-Sex Attraction: Two Patterns

From Jeff Robinson, Part 2

Source: http://theguardrail.com/understanding

Why do some men find themselves sexually attracted to other men?  How does it get started? While no two men have exactly the same experience, there are some fairly common patterns. I want to describe two of them.

First Pattern

The first pattern I will describe is somewhat less common.  It fits for only
about half of the clients I talk to.  But when it does fit, it is very important to understand. It
begins when a boy is very young, in pre-adolescence or early adolescence. This young man, who is
unusually emotionally sensitive, self analytical, and perfectionistic, begins to hear about 
chastity, sexual  morality, purity, and moral cleanliness.  He makes up his mind, at a very deep
level, that he is not going to think sexual thought about girls. He sees them as too pure, too
sacred to think about in that way. It is likely  however, that he has heard little if any
discussion about not thinking sexual thoughts about other boys. He may also assume that since he is
allowed to see other boys in locker rooms or other situations and that he himself is a boy and can
look at himself in the mirror, that seeing or thinking about other boys must not be that bad.  As a
result, when this young man hits puberty and begins to have the experience of strong sexual
arousal, he is actually less resistive, feels less guilt, in thinking sexually about other boys
than he would thinking about girls.

I commonly asked clients which they would feel most guilty about: having an explicit sexual fantasy
about a women or having a similarly  explicit sexual fantasy about a man. About half of them tell
me that they would feel more guilt fantasizing about a woman. The majority of those who feel that
way say that they would feel two or three times more guilty fantasizing about a woman. So when this
pattern fits, it has a very strong effect.

GMM: Okay, this is right on. As he was describing the first pattern, I just kept thinking yes, this is me! It was pounded into me when growing up that I shouldn't have any sexual thoughts about girls. It was deeply engrained into me. But I was never taught to not look at boys. So, in my weirdly twisted brain, it was much less wrong to look at boys than girls. I didn't really resist it much.

Second Pattern

The second pattern I would like to describe in the development of same -sex attraction is more common than the first one. It fits for a significant majority of men. It is a little bit more complex, and it sometimes goes hand in hand with the first pattern.

The men I counsel who experienced same-sex attraction often say something like “from an early age I have always felt different from or rejected by other men or boys.” For some men, this has to do
with their relationship with their father; they felt distant from their father or felt that their father didn't approve of them. Some did not like their father, and did not want to be like him. But for many other men, same-sex attraction does not seem to have much to do with their father at all. Some people believe this problem is always about the father, but many men I have counseled say they had good, often very good, relationships with their fathers.

Instead, for many individuals I counsel with, feeling different or rejected had to do with peers or
sometimes siblings. Some men were made fun of or teased. They may have been called “gay” or “fag” or other kinds of names when they were growing up. Some were left out of activities ; some simply did not like traditional activities like sports or cars or other kinds of things that boys are
supposed to like. Some were more drawn to artistic endeavors, and many have been more expressive
and more verbal. They may have excelled in art, music, drama or other less stereotypically male
activities.

GMM: Check, check, check. I had a decent enough relationship with my dad, but I've always struggled with relationships with other guys. The irony there is any of my friends would peg me as an extrovert.. Anyway, I never really fit in. Sports? No thanks. My act of rebellion in my family was keeping out of sports. And by the time I was starting to be interested in sports, everyone else was pretty good already, so I was too far behind. I did end up in choir and loved it. And I was constantly called gay, which I hated. I don't think people really thought I was, but 4-6 grades were pretty rough that way.

So from a very young age, they felt different or rejected by other males. Because of this, they
began to focus on other boys or men very intensely, almost obsessively. That intense focus most
often took one or more of three different forms:

First, they may have focused on other boys with envy and comparisons to themselves: “Why can't I be like other guys? I am so different! Why can't I have that guy's good looks, that guy's muscles,
that guy's body, that guy's sexual development, that guy's popularity?”

GMM: You mean not everyone does that? Totally describes me here.

Second, they may have focused on other boys through their desire to belong. They saw other boys in

groups of friends and buddies laughing, talking, and roughhousing, and they wanted to belong, to be
included, to fit in. They wanted to be liked and cared about.

Third, they may have focused on other boys with fascination and curiosity. They found them
intriguing. They may have been intrigued by their masculinity or by their sexual development. They
may have been intrigued by them aesthetically—they simply found them to be beautiful. So in one or
more of these three different ways—and often in all three—they became very focused on other men.

GMM: I had actually told my wife about this before. I was so concerned during puberty about if I was developing right, if I was right and normal. I became fixated on it.

 

Next came puberty, I'm sorry for being a little bit explicit here, but this is an explicit topic
and to really understand what happens in the lives of these young men, we need to be specific.
Young adolescent boys are very easily sexually aroused. Usually by the age of 12 they are becoming 
aroused many times each day. They may become aroused by any change in their physical environment, by any significant shift in their emotions, or for no reason at all. They may think, "I'm hot, I get aroused; I'm cold, I get aroused; my pants are too tight, I get aroused; my pants are too
loose, I  get aroused; I need to use the bathroom, I get aroused; the car ride is bumpy, I get
aroused." Or maybe they think "I'm nervous, I get aroused; I'm excited, I get aroused; I'm relaxed, I get aroused; I'm happy, I get aroused." Or for no reason at all they just get aroused multiple times during the day. I had one sixteen year old client say to me once "I'm doing much better at not having sexual fantasies, so I just have the normal arousal, about every forty-five minutes."

At this stage in their life, this arousal is what I would call “un- differentiated.” It is not
connected to any particular gender or even to other people in general. They simply get aroused a
lot. The majority boys at this stage of life are almost bored with other boys : “I've been playing
football with these guys; we've been hanging out together; there's nothing new, exciting or
intriguing there. But those girls over there, they're shaped differently, they talk differently,
and most importantly, my culture sends me all kinds of messages about sexuality, romance,
girlfriends, marriage and sex”—and so this arousal which is frequent and strong, but which up to
this point has been undifferentiated, soon begins to focus on girls.

Most boys become sexually attracted to girls for the same reason they speak English: it's what
their culture trains them to do.  As in language acquisition, a growing child eventually acquires
the ability to speak, or, in the case of sexuality, to get aroused, but the specific ways in which
these general abilities will eventually be expressed is most strongly influenced by their cultural
surroundings.

So what happens in the life of young men who begins to struggle with same-sex attraction? What
happens differently for them? Well, for a significant minority of boys their focus at this stage
isn't on girls; instead, their focus is still on other boys because of envy, wanting to belong,
fascination, and curiosity. It is the other boys they want to be like. It is the other boys they
want to be close to and accepted by. It is the other boys they are fascinated by and have strong
emotional reactions to. So eventually it is the other boys they begin to be aroused by.

In my experience, these are the two most common ways that a young man begins to experience sexual attraction to other young men: anxiety or guilt about having sexual feelings towards girls; and
intense focus on other boys at the onset of puberty. It is not uncommon for significant numbers of
adolescent boys to experience some sexual arousal towards other boys.  But for most boys this
experience of same-sex arousal has little lasting significance. They may notice it, but they
quickly shrugged it off as unimportant, not worth worrying about.

We are concerned, about are the boys who get stuck there; the ones for whom this experience of
same-sex arousal becomes increasingly frequent and intense during their adolescent years. To
understand why this happens for some young men, it is important to remember that we are talking
about those who have three characteristics in common: they are unusually emotionally sensitive, they are extraordinarily introspective or self analytical and they care intensely about doing things right. When these young men notice that they are beginning to be sexually aroused by other men, five things happen. For some these things happen very quickly; for others they may occur slowly over a period of years.

GMM: Oops, I got stuck. :)

 http://theguardrail.com/files/Understanding_Unwanted_Same-Sex%20Attraction.pdf