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Enter subhead content here What If I Don't Change? By Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. Over the years, many men have come to my office for help in changing their sexual orientation. Homosexuality doesn't work in their lives. It just never feels right or true. To these men, it is clear that gay relationships don't reflect who they are as gendered beings, and that they have been designed--physically and emotionally--for opposite-sex coupling. But
reorientation therapy is a long and difficult process, with no guarantee of success. What if the man doesn't change? Will
he have gained anything of value? People are often surprised to hear that in reparative therapy, typically there
is very little discussion about sex. In fact, it is a mistake for any psychotherapy to focus exclusively on one particular
symptom. Clients come in with a difficulty that they want removed from their life--an eating disorder, gambling obsession,
or unwanted same-sex attraction-- but good therapy addresses the whole person. I typically tell my clients in the very first session, "Rule Number One is, never accept anything I say unless
it resolates as true for you." The experience of the client, whatever that may be, must always trump any preconceived
theory. Reparative theory holds that the origin of SSA is in unmet emotional and identification needs with the same sex, and
the client is free to accept or reject that premise. If that doesn't feel true to him, he will usually decide to leave
therapy after one or two sessions. But if he continues, the therapeutic setting will provide a "holding environment,"
an opportunity in which he can explore, reexperience and assimilate past, painful trauma. Here, he begins to liberate himself
from old patterns of self-sabotage. He grows beyond the emotional isolation and chronic loneliness that have so long limited
him, and develops a renewed emotional investment in authentic relatedness. Through a relationship with an attuned therapist, the client discovers how it feels to emotionally disclose to another
man--revealing those long-buried, shame-evoking feelings. He experiences from him a deep acceptance of wherever he is in his
life, at that point in time, whether he changes or not. Such an experience is always deeply therapeutic. Besides
an enhanced ability to develop genuine male friendships, the client will discover healthier relationships with females-- where
he learns to prohibit the boundary violations with women that have caused him to surrender his separate, masculine selfhood. He
will also learn how to examine himself with appropriate criticism--no longer "beating himself up" with self-blame--
and in the process, he will better distinguish between constructive critiques and shame-based distortions. As one client put
it, "In the past, I made the worst self-appraisals and simply assumed the worst about myself. But now, there
is a clarity of wants and needs--strength in my voice--and a deeper way of communicating." With time, he develops the conviction that he must accept the people in his life as they are, without the need to
defensively distort reality in order to remember them as having been better than they were. Further, any hurt and anger at
parents and peers turns into a certain benevolent acceptance: "They were what they were." "In their own way,
I know my parents loved me." "Those other guys had their own insecurities." Here, the man comes to understand
the attachments he has formed with a new attitude of humility and compassion--even toward those who have hurt him. One
man told me: Last night I had a salient conversation with myself about giving to others. I can empathize with other
people more--because now, I can feel my own feelings more. I think I've finally quit hiding from myself--and
I want my personal journey to end with deeper relationships with people. Rather than focusing on sexual-orientation
change, the primary work of therapy is, in fact, to teach the client to relate from a place of authenticity, openness and
honesty. This way-of-being in the world is what we call the Assertive Stance, where the person matches up his inner feelings
with his outer dealings--to paraphrase Fosha, who defines the healthy individual as the person who is actively "feeling
and dealing." * We, too, believe that "feeling and dealing" is the essential ingredient to the healing
of SSA: teaching the person to live and love from his authentic self. When he truly does so, we believe, his unwanted SSA
will powerfully diminish and ultimately disappear. Besides this growth in human connectedness, the client learns
to reject the Shame Posture that has so long paralyzed him. As one man explained: "In the center of my chest
I feel the heavy truth that I've spent 40 years of my life not taking action; afraid of men--afraid of women--afraid of
living. I've let my shame-wound separate me from people." The client should conclude therapy with a better
understanding of why he has those attractions that feel so alien to his ego, and what he can do, if he wishes, to continue
to diminish them. But what about the client who fails to change; will he be left in a sort of "intimacy limbo"
-- not heterosexual, yet unable to be intimate with men? The truth is, our client was never intimate with men. That is why
he came to therapy. He also came to us because he believes that true sexual intimacy with a person of the same gender is,
in fact, not possible: same-sex eroticism simply fails to match his biological and emotional design, and does not reflect
who he is on the deepest level. Some clients, of course, change their worldview over time. "Jason" recently
left reparative therapy to live in a gay relationship. He had come to believe that homosexuality was, contrary to his earlier
beliefs, truly compatible with his religion. His worldview had changed so much that he and I were no longer in fundamental
agreement about the meaning of homosexuality, and we agreed to end our working relationship. He told me, "I didn't
change sexual orientation, but I can truly say that I've learned to be my own person." Other men enter
reparative therapy as gay-identified from the start. With those clients, we agree on a precondition to our working together--that
is, we will not address the issue of sexual-identity change, but we will work on all of their other problems in living. And
so we work on issues like capacity for intimacy, problems with self-esteem, internalized shame, childhood trauma, and the
search for identity. The good therapist always conveys his complete acceptance of the client, even if that client
eventually decides to gay-identify. Like Jason, some of our clients decide to change course and embrace homosexuality as "who
they are." Some never lose their conviction that they were designed to be heterosexual, and they persist toward that
goal. Others remain ambivalent about change, while going in and out of gay life over a period of months. We accept their choices
even if we don't agree with them, because we accept the person. |
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