Tracking the source

As a kid I did not feel like anyone was there for me emotionally. I was left to deal with my feelings on my own. So in thinking about this void and legitimate need that went unmet, I came across a blog post that articulated what I see as my progression into struggling with homosexuality.

It should be no surprise, then, that when a person longs for intimacy with another, that longing may include a desire to share sexual pleasure. For most people, that longing is directed toward members of the opposite sex. Normal development usually includes, as stated earlier, an early phase of bonding with the same sex. By the time this need for same-sex bonding has been satisfied and the child is ready for relations with the opposite sex, he is also entering puberty with its accompanying sexual drives. Perfect timing! Right when we’re emotionally prepared for romantic love, our bodies are following suit.

But what happens when we’re not emotionally prepared for relationships with the opposite sex? What if, by the time we reach puberty, our need for same-sex love is still unsatisfied and predominant? Our bodies won’t wait for our emotions to catch up. Instead, we may develop strong sexual desires which may cross, like wires, with our emotional needs. In that case, the emotional need for closeness and identification with other people of our sex becomes a sexualized need, with members of our own sex being the object of both our sexual and emotional desires.

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It probably started with your perceptions. You began to see yourself as a child without resources. You know better than I exactly what resources you were lacking: affirmation, attention, a figure to identify with, or maybe a combination of all three. You couldn’t articulate it back then; you only knew that something was missing. And that “something” probably centred around a need for stronger bond with those of your own sex. Maybe you felt different from your peers or alienated from one or both of your parents, most noticeably the one of your own gender. That hurt, no doubt. You wanted closeness; you felt distance. You can’t really say, perhaps, who is to bless or who is to blame. Maybe there was obvious rejection; maybe not. But the result is the same either way.

Maybe you responded by withdrawing, creating your own world of safety and fantasy. Or perhaps you simply waited for someone special to love you and take care of you. You may even have become angry, resolving to never again let yourself feel hurt or rejected by another member of your own sex. Each of these responses affected your relationships with other boys/girls and, eventually, with other men and women. You felt different from them, too. They may never have known your feelings of differentness, but you were all too aware of them. They persisted, giving rise to an aching desire to bond, to be close, to feel accepted.

At some point, perhaps very early, maybe later, you realized that this desire was more than emotional. It was accompanied by sexual longings. Most likely, you were aware of those longings before you even knew what homosexuality was. Then one day you heard the word queer or fag, pondered its meaning, put two and two together, and realized you were one of “them.” It became your secret, most likely difficult to keep and even more difficult to bear. You didn’t ask for these feelings, but you learned that they were unacceptable to most people. That didn’t encourage you to talk them over with anyone, even those closest to you. Your secret became your private burden, one you carried for years. Perhaps even to this day.

So for you, homosexuality, whether expressed through actions or fantasies, represents legitimate emotional needs that have not been satisfied through normal means. You are not mentally ill, reprobate, or retarded. In fact, you may be a highly capable adult who functions well in most areas. But at some point you have found deep satisfaction through homosexual feeling.

<http://thetruthsetsyoufree.wordpress.com/sexualization-of-emotional-needs/>

Ugh this is so hard to put out there. But I need to, otherwise I will keep interacting with everyone I meet using all the unhealthy methods of relating that I have secretly used my whole life. It makes me think of a term that a fellow struggler shared, "emotionally handicapped", but that is a whole other post in and of itself!