Putting Together The Links

I’ve started to realize that there are things that I use to help me avoid what I’m feeling. I’ve been circumventing away from what my heart has been trying to tell me, and what my soul is trying to inform me of.

I’ve noticed that I use porn and masturbation as a way to avoid my true feelings about homosexuality. I use to think that the homosexual tendencies that I experience are strictly physical and non-emotional. I have since learned that that is far from the truth, and that I overwhelmingly have, first and foremost, an emotional connection to men and a need to connect to masculinity in a way that stimulates me romantically.

I place these feelings very deep within me. I see that these emotional underpinnings are what my conscious mind is trying to avoid. All along I though that my “weaknesses” for masculinity and the male form were entirely physical. And what the scapegoat of a purely physical attraction gave me was the sense that my attraction to men was purely superficial. And with a superficial attraction I was able to talk myself into relationships with women, without noticing the deeper meaning of the external appeal in men.

It sounded good and I was relieved to be able to tell myself that “superficially I’m attracted to men, only on a physical level, and that I am soly lured by the thought of masculinity, but the deeper region of my human essence isn’t permeated to the core and fundamental emotional component of who I am is not contaminated with homosexual desires.”

Learning I was wrong brought me to my knees. And I recognize the part that masturbation played in that it helped fuel the fire of my “superficially physical attraction.” Looking at the physical while the emotional lurked underneath caused me to only see the physical desire that I had for men and at the same time cause the emotional to cry out to be noticed. That emotional need was stifled and is continuing to be stifled by the fact that I use masturbation as a way to push out the emotional connection to men and what the emotional connection means. And what that means is that the love I have for my wife is not enough, and that I am depriving my soul of essential developmental opportunities.

Now I realize that what was once below the surface was an emotional and spiritual connection that I truly longed for. And now I see that it was too painful for me to realize. The masturbation literally kept my emotional desires for men hidden because I was reinforcing the physical desire to numb the shame I felt about feeling a desire to connect emotionally to men.

The emotional is surfacing and while it’s a relief to finally let myself feel what it has for me to feel, I’m left with not knowing what to do with it because I don’t know how to incorporate it into my life within the context that I find myself in…gay Mormon and married.