“I need your help,” Steven said. “I just don’t know how to get past this. I try and try and try to quit looking at gay porn and masturbating, and after about two weeks, I fall flat on my face and have to go to confession again. I don’t know what to do.”
“Part of the problem is you think your unwanted same-sex attraction and your pornography addiction are one problem. They’re not. They’re two different problems with an overlap.”
You see, same-sex attraction is an identity disorder, what is sometimes called a “perceived masculinity deficit”. The individual perceives that he lacks masculinity, which is untrue, he just isn’t in touch with the masculinity that already exists inside him. The pornography addiction is the state of being a slave to his passions/desires.
One can experience same-sex attraction without being a slave to their passions, and can practice perfect chastity, grow in holiness, life a fulfilling life, even some get married.
One can also become a slave to one’s passions regardless of their specific attraction. One can become addicted to porn, food, alcohol, drugs, money, all kinds of things without being attracted to someone of the same sex. (There’s actually an emotional root to these, but that’s another issue for another blog post).
When working with clients, generally, we first begin by working on eliminating or at least greatly diminishing the compulsive behavior, namely the porn addiction. Yes, this is going to help diminish some of the same-sex attraction as well, because both have emotional charges to them and have underlying traumas associated with them, but often times the underlying traumas are not the same. Sometimes the underlying trauma for the porn addiction is simply the shock or humiliation of having seen the pornographic image, which is something our souls were not created to view. The souls of children are ever more severely disturbed at viewing such things.
This means that many people addicted to porn are reliving what was actually a traumatic experience of seeing porn for the first time. Part of the trauma is seeing a grownup posing like that in a magazine, which is beyond comprehension for many children. Healing that trauma of first exposure is an important part of the process. Another porn-related trauma, that might have an overlap would be if the boy was caught looking at porn, and was shamed for it. Oddly enough, it’s usually the mom that catches him and shames him. If it’s straight porn, he may become further addicted to it because the girls in the porn also provide for his emotional needs corresponding to what is lacking in his relationship with mom. (Also another future blog topic.).
There are different traumas and neglect though that often underlie the same-sex attraction. First is just flat out neglect from dad, he’s not interested in being the father that his son needs. Common traumas underlying SSA are early sexual activity with boys his own age or somewhat older, abuse from adult male. Another is that when the boy was young, he was walking around the house naked, playing with himself, as young boys (2-6yo) often do, and mom finds him and shames or emasculates him for it.
Well of course the boy has no idea what he did wrong, because he’s an innocent child just playing with a part of his body, not intending any harm, malice, or sin. Mom overreacts, often due to her own issues, possibly guilt at her own sexual sin, or disgust at her own husband’s pornography/masturbation and she lacks the sense of proportionality and emotional maturity to respond properly to her little son’s innocent exploration. So she freaks out and it scares him, and it becomes an obsession of his to try to figure out why his penis is so bad and off limits, and to try to discover if his is any different than any other boy’s. The SSA is an issue regarding the boy’s relationship with himself.
One of the great realities with addressing the pornography addiction first is that the client has no idea how bad he really feels as a result of the porn addiction, and that once he gets rid of that he will feel tremendously better in his daily life, even while still having unwanted same-sex attraction. Once the pornography and masturbation is diminished or eliminated, we work on bringing down the feelings of shame, or of “I’m not good enough”, and other underlying issues that remain regarding he SSA.
