Many people have sought to change unwanted homosexual feelings. Some have succeeded completely. Others have succeeded only in part, or not at all. Many, perhaps most, have become frustrated along the way at times when they did not see results as quickly or as completely as they would have liked. Some give up, apparently convinced that since whatever they have tried has not worked (yet), nothing will ever work.

 

Roadblocks

 

In our own lives, we found that we hit roadblocks to change when our efforts were not as broad or as comprehensive as needed. This happened, for instance, when we focused all our efforts on just one aspect of healing - on spirituality, for example - but resisted necessary work on overcoming estrangement from men and masculinity, or on healing emotional wounds of the past, or on discovering and meeting our authentic needs.

 

We also hit roadblocks when we were unwilling to do whatever it takes, and everything it takes, to change. "I want to change, as long as no one ever finds out I have this struggle," some of us said. Or, "I want to change, but only if God does all the work," or, "but only if I don't have to break out of my comfort zone," or "but only if… (fill in the blank)." As they say in the Twelve Step programs, "Half measures availed us nothing." Often it turned out that the very thing we were most resistant to changing was the most important thing about ourselves we had to change!

 

An Integrated Solution

 

In his book, Growth into Manhood (Harold Shaw Publishers, 2000), Alan Medinger writes (page 239) that homosexuality is not a single problem or conflict, but a group of problems that together produce homosexual attractions. Each of these problems must be dealt with individually, he writes. So it was that we found that reducing or eliminating homosexual feelings and causing heterosexual desires to develop required life changes in four broad, overlapping areas:

 

 

 


Developing Male Identity: Internalizing Masculinity 
Claiming Our Place in the Circle of Men
What We Did to Effect Change

 

 

 

 

For most of us, the longing that we came to identify as homosexual desire actually began long before we ever experienced it as an erotic attraction. It was the natural and necessary yearning that every little boy feels to be loved and wanted by his father, to feel like he belongs as "one of the guys," and to feel confident in his masculine identity.

If a boy's longing for masculine connection remains unmet, it can grow into an open wound as he enters adolescence. Sometimes, with the hormonal surge of puberty, it can become inadvertently sexualized. So it was with us. Having felt insufficient love and masculine affirmation from father, father figures or male peers throughout our developmental years, we began to see men as the opposite from us -- masculine, mysterious and different -- while we too easily identified with women as our sisters.

But sexualizing men - relating to them as lovers -- would only further the sense of estrangement we felt from men and from our own masculine identities. It could never fill the true need we felt to bond with men as our brothers and to experience brotherly love, as a man among men.

 

In our own journeys, we found that connecting deeply with our masculinity was a terribly significant area of healing that had to take place in two important realms: internally and interpersonally.

 

 

 

We do not mean to suggest that a man cannot be both masculine and gay. Some gay men do exude a confident masculinity that other men, both gay and straight, admire and respect. Neither do we mean to suggest that heterosexual men do not struggle with insecurity about their masculinity. They frequently do. Insecurity over masculinity is a very common experience for men from all walks of life.

 

But in our own lives, we found that trying to build our connection to the masculine through homosexual thoughts and actions was like trying to quench thirst by drinking salt water. We longed for meaningful connections with (heterosexual) men and a stronger, more confident masculine identity. But turning to gay men, gay thoughts or a gay identity to meet these needs only caused us to feel more emasculated, isolated and different. Our thirst increased instead of being quenched.

 

In our case, extreme disconnection from and longing for masculinity created in us a great unmet need for closeness and connection with men -- a need we inadvertently eroticized and sought to meet sexually when we couldn't find a way -- or didn't dare -- to fill it in platonic, heterosexual ways. But ironically, the very thing we needed most was the thing we feared the most. Past experience had taught us not to trust men. We had come to believe that heterosexual men were unable to meet our needs for affection, compassion and attention. Tragically, we ran from what we most needed.

 

Developing Male Identity: Internalizing Masculinity

 

In his book, Growth Into Manhood, Alan Medinger writes: "For many men, craving for the masculine is the central driving force in their homosexuality, as it once was for me" (Growth Into Manhood, Harold Shaw Publisher, 2000, page 82). In fact, he suggests that if a man has an incomplete male identity, that can be the engine that drives homosexual behaviors and attractions.

 

"The alternative to having an identity as a man is to have some other identity," Alan Medinger writes. "What will it be?" He writes that, in his experience, men seeking to transition out of unwanted homosexual desires are often inclined to focus first and foremost on their behavior and attractions, for those are the areas that cause them the most distress. But, he says, it is generally more effective for a man to focus first and foremost on his identity, especially initially. This is true for two reasons, Medinger says:

"First, identity is more amenable to direct attack than behavior or attractions… (It) can be changed significantly through a program of conscious choices and specific actions…. Second, a man's incomplete male identity is what drives and directs homosexual behavior and attractions." (Growth Into Manhood, page 16)

 

In other words, by placing more emphasis on identity than on behavior or attractions, a man addresses root causes, rather than resulting symptoms.

 

Identity may be defined as the way a man sees himself, especially the beliefs and judgments he holds about himself in relation to others, as well as the groups and types of individuals he identifies himself as belonging to or sharing common characteristics with. So if identity is based on adopted beliefs and chosen associations, consider, then, how malleable identity can be, and how susceptible it can be to deliberate manipulation.

 

One man who has overcome homosexuality writes:

"Over the course of my life, I have embraced at various times the identities of 'the good little boy,' a rebel, an artist, a righteous man, an inadequate man, a powerful and courageous man, a sex addict, a gay man, a bisexual man, a straight man, an outdoorsman, an urbanite, a loner, a success, a miserable failure, and many others.

 

"When I think about all the ways I've viewed myself at different points of my life, I am amazed at how malleable my identity has been. Some of these identities have come and gone just by changing my circumstances and my attitudes toward those circumstances. Some have changed by changing whom I associated with and whom I saw myself as being like, or wanting to be like. Some identity changes I made quite consciously and deliberately, while others were more accidental and circumstantial."

 

While some types of identity may have insignificant emotional consequences, if any, a man's (and before that, a boy's) gender identity is an absolutely core factor in how he feels about himself and how he relates to the world. It affects whether he sees himself as being like other men, or more like women, or something in between. It affects his sense of isolation or belonging, his sense of wholeness or emptiness, his sense of connection or disconnection.

 

Most significantly, it affects which gender he sees as being his opposite. And that, perhaps more than anything, affects which gender he finds himself attracted to.

Alan Medinger writes:

 

"The essence of sexual attraction seems to be 'differences' or 'otherness'… What if a man does not have the inner sense that he is a man? Will he experience attraction to a woman? Will she be his 'other'? No, and this is critical. If he feels that he is not complete as a man, his first longing will be not for women but for complete manhood; he will be drawn to the masculine in other males. This will be his 'other.' This will be his missing rib… It follows, then, that the development of our manhood - finding completion in ourselves - will do great things both to decrease our same-sex attractions and to start drawing us sexually to women."

 

Once we understood that our homosexual feelings stemmed from a little boy's lifelong hunger for normal connection to men and to his own masculinity, the path to healing became clear. Frightening, perhaps, but clear. We would have to go back and heal the little boy's wounds by learning to love, trust and identify with men as brothers. We would no longer resist these "reparative" urges, but rather, we would seek to fulfill our normal need for male affirmation and connection.

 

Claiming Our Place in the Circle of Men

 

It is never to develop one's masculinity and claim one's rightful place in the circle of men. As Alan Medinger writes, testing and affirming manhood can take place at any time in a man's life, but it must be done in the same way that boys do it:

"We must be affirmed by men; they are the ones we still see as having the authority to affirm manhood…Manhood is formed in the company of men, and so affirmation must be sought on their terms…And like it or not, affirmation must come from what we do." (Growth Into Manhood, pages 58-59)

 

Medinger introduces two key principles relating to masculine development:

 

1. "The first is that every man has to go through certain developmental stages; there is no real shortcut to growth. If we didn't go through those stages as boys, we will have to go through them now.

 

2. "The second principle is that manhood is to a great extent a matter of doing, and we will grow into manhood by doing the things that men do" (Growth Into Manhood, page xiii)

 

Medinger writes that he found his homosexual struggle was largely a problem of undeveloped manhood, emotional neediness and an uncertain identity. He writes:

"Now, 15, 20 or 40 years later, if you want to resume your growth, you will have to venture back out into the world of men and boys. Essentially, you are going to have to develop your manhood in the same way that young boys do, through a process of learning, testing, failing, getting back up and testing again, and finally succeeding. We grow into the fullness of manhood by doing the things that men do.

 

"Once you are into this process and have had a few successes -- regardless of the failures in between -- a reinforcing process will start to set in…You will find that you are being affirmed by other men. You will start to conform to your own inner sense of what a man is. You will start to gain a sense that you are becoming the man God created you to be, and…that you are fulfilling his purpose for you as a man." (Growth Into Manhood, page 8)

 

What We Did to Effect Change

 

Here, then, are various changes that many of us made in order to build our personal sense of masculinity and belonging to the world of men:

 

1. We worked to recognize and overcome our prejudices against or fear of heterosexual men, on the one hand, and, at the other extreme, our idealization of certain types of men we envied and lusted after. We began consciously looking for the similarities and commonalities we shared with other men, and stopped emphasizing and exaggerating the supposed differences.

 

 

 

 

2. We separated ourselves from a gay identity, gay associations and gay culture; separated ourselves from activities and relationships that caused us to over-identify with women; and consciously adopted a new identity as a strong man developing his full heterosexual masculinity

 

 

 

 

 

3. Finding that building our inner sense of masculinity was in many ways synonymous with developing our personal power and inner strength, we had to let go of a sense of helplessness, hopelessness and victimization. We replaced them with a renewed sense of responsibility and accountability for what we did with our lives.

 

4. We searched out and adopted a community of men (a church group, fraternal organization, Twelve Step group, service group or other men's organization -- see "Resources and Links") where we could learn to feel safe and at home among heterosexual men and receive affirmation for ourselves as men.

 

5. We stretched beyond our old comfort zones to make new friends with heterosexual men we admired and to spend more time in the company of men.

 

 

 

6. We learned to trust other men as we took the calculated risk of sharing our hidden selves with carefully chosen men who seemed especially compassionate and trustworthy, and secure in their own heterosexuality.

 

 

 

7. We sought out father figures, "elders," "coaches" and mentors to help "re-father" us in positive ways.

 

 

 

 

8. Without denying our true interests or true selves, we challenged ourselves to do more of the things that most men do and fewer of the things that most men don't (see Alan Medinger's "Growth Into Manhood") -- or more of the things that made us feel connected to our masculinity. We earned the admiration and affirmation of men we respected by challenging ourselves in the world of men.

 

 

 

 

 

9. We increased our physicality and our emotional connection to and appreciation for our male bodies, accepting their limitations while challenging them in new ways.

 

 

 

10. The more grounded we felt in our masculine identities, and the more powerful we felt as men, the more we began to feel attracted to the femininity of women.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Authentic Core Emotions
Counter Emotions or Inhibitory Feelings
Defense Mechanisms and Distractions
Rejecting Shame -- and Accepting Ourselves As We Are
What We Did to Effect Change

 

 

 

The journey out of homosexuality is a journey inward, a journey of self-discovery, authentic self-expression and renewal. It is not a journey of willpower. It is a journey of healing -- of uncovering and healing the underlying pain and emptiness that had caused so much of our homosexual yearning to begin with.

 

During the long years before we found a path out of homosexuality, many of us had been living a lie for so long, we no longer knew what it was to be authentic or to be connected with our true feelings. We had put on a false front and lied that everything was "fine." Many of us went out of our way to be especially "good boys," never getting into trouble, being moms' and teachers' favorites. But inside we were in pain, silently aching.

 

The lies we lived go back to well before we became aware of emerging homosexual desires. They were about buried pain that we couldn't understand and were sure that no one else could either -- pain about feeling different, not fitting in, feeling alienated from Dad, feeling more like one of the girls than one of the boys, being picked on by bullies, or being desperately lonely. Some of us carried secrets and shame about sex play with other boys or even sexual abuse by older boys or men. Some of us were taught when we were very young that our emotions -- especially anger, sadness (or tears, anyway) and fear -- were bad and wrong. Being sensitive and "good little boys," we tried to comply by shutting off our feelings altogether.

 

To avoid feeling the pain, we shut down emotionally. Feeling nothing at all was inordinately preferable to feeling the full weight of our fear, sadness, loneliness and hurt.

 

Reparative therapist David Matheson writes:

"Emotional disconnection is ubiquitous among the men dealing with unwanted homosexuality with whom I've worked. This doesn't mean that these men are completely disconnected from feeling (although some are). Rather, it means they are disconnected from feelings about certain important aspects of their lives or history - some of them primal, pivotal or even traumatic life experiences about which they have shut off real feeling."

 

Time alone would make the pain go away, if we could just keep it buried long enough -- or so we hoped. But we were woefully wrong. Past hurts don't die. Buried pain becomes stronger, not weaker. It festers and rots and finds sneaky ways to express itself and be "heard" -- through addictions and obsessions, envy and lust, shame and helplessness, or other self-destructive forms that fed our homosexual yearnings.

Eventually we learned that if we were ever to be freed from unwanted homosexual desires, we would have to free our hearts and reconnect with our core emotions, fully and authentically. We had to release our shame, and work through and heal long-buried anger and hurt. We had to rediscover ourselves.

 

But it would not be enough to feel authentically. We would also have to live authentically in our relationships with others. We had to stop living our lives for others or trying to be what we thought they wanted us to be. We needed to be genuine and authentic with others - undefended and without detachment. We had to let go of our defenses and facades and trust that we were good enough, just as we were, to be fully seen and heard.

 

Authentic Core Emotions

In the Journey Into Manhood weekend retreats presented by People Can Change, the staff teaches that there are four core emotions, and that authentic connection to these feelings is essential in any kind of emotional healing. The four core emotions are:

 

 

Core emotions create powerful sensations in the body, and with those sensations they create impulses to move or act or respond. Core emotions are those feelings that have the capacity to move a person toward greater maturity and wholeness. They cause one to want to expand rather than contract, to open up rather than shut down. Sadness, for example, moves a man through the experience of loss by expanding him to encompass the loss. He becomes something more than he was before.

 

Counter Emotions or Inhibitory Feelings

 

What happens, though, if a man's grief is too overwhelming, his anger too out of control, or his fear too shameful? What happens, in other words, if his authentic emotions are just too painful? He may learn to contain his authentic emotions, to hide them or box them in. He may protect himself from experiencing these authentic emotions by putting up a wall of "counter emotions" or inhibitory feelings.

 

So his authentic emotions may be subsumed by shame, depression, anxiety, lust, helplessness, passivity or other feelings that prevent him from feeling his core emotions. These are considered counter or inhibitory because, rather than impel a person to action, they inhibit action. Rather than bring about healing, they prolong hurt. Rather than increase self-understanding, they cloud it. Rather than tell him the truth, they tell him lies. They are feelings that cause him to shut down rather than to act, to go within rather than to move outside of himself and connect with others.

 

Defense Mechanisms and Distractions

 

In addition, outside this layer of counter emotions a man may unconsciously add another layer of defense mechanisms or distractions. These are beliefs, judgments and behaviors designed to protect the man from feeling anything at all -- even false emotions or inhibitory feelings. They may include sexual addiction, overeating, or drug or alcohol abuse. They may also include intellectualizing away emotional situations, defensive humor, rigidity and false piety, and compulsive behaviors.

Our challenge, then, was to get through the layers of defenses and false emotions in order to experience life from our core emotions. Usually, our most significant work was to get fully in touch with our grief and anger, to "hear" these feelings, honor them, and release the sadness and anger that has been bottled up, usually for many years. And when it was time, to forgive and let go.

 

Admittedly, this could be terrifying. But a courageous man is not one who has no fears; a courageous man is one who does what he fears. Without fear, there can be no courage.

 

Rejecting Shame -- and Accepting Ourselves As We Are

 

It's ironic but true: Until we could begin to love and accept ourselves just as we were, right then, unchanged, many of us found we could make little progress toward real change. Acceptance of our goodness, our value and our true potential as men was a critical early step out of homosexuality.

 

Thus, we came to understand these two essential truths about ourselves:

 

1. Guilt and shame can NEVER motivate real change. A change effort motivated primarily by guilt and shame will always fail; we found, in our case, that shame FUELED our homosexual feelings and compulsive behaviors, NOT recovery.

 

2. Our homosexual yearnings resulted, in part, from our problems relating to the world of men. And, relationship problems can NEVER heal in isolation, without relating..

 

These two principles are closely inter-related. We found we could never break free of shame while keeping such a monumental part of ourselves hidden from the people whose love and acceptance we most craved. We couldn't begin to trust others if we feared they would reject us if they knew our secret. We couldn't open our hearts to receive love from others when we couldn't love ourselves.

 

Does accepting ourselves as we are, with all our weaknesses and limitations, block us from change? No, just the opposite! Imagine a college freshman who desires to be a medical doctor one day. Does he berate himself for not being an M.D. already? Does he compare himself to experienced surgeons and criticize himself for not being one of them? Does he try to "pass" as something he isn't (yet)? No. Accepting himself as he is right now, without self criticism, will actually HELP him reach his goal by putting him on the right path to learn what he needs to learn and gain the experience he needs to gain, at the right time in the right way. Anything else would cause him to fail before he has even begun.

 

And so, through trial and error -- and usually some divine intervention! -- we came to accept ourselves as we were. We began to see that God and most other people held us in much higher esteem than we did ourselves! We discovered that people didn't always reject us; that many were in fact capable of seeing past our struggle to our inner worth.

 

What We Did to Effect Change

 

Here, then, are various changes that many of us had to make:

 

1. We began to love and accept ourselves just as we were, right then, unchanged. "

 

 

 

 

 

2. In order to really release ourselves from the grips of shame, we realized we had to come out of secrecy and isolation and share our true selves with selected others whom we believed had the compassion and discretion to hear our pain and still accept us.

 

 

 

3. We identified the defense mechanisms and distractions we had been using as coping mechanisms to avoid feeling, and we began to work a program of removing them from our lives.

 

 

 

 

4. Digging still deeper, we identified and worked through the counter emotions or inhibitory feelings that had shut us down -- whether shame, depression, anxiety, helplessness, or others.

 

 

5. As we continued doing deep inner work, we ultimately were able to access long buried, authentic core emotions -- especially anger and grief -- at the root of so much of our pain. No longer willing to stifle or deny these authentic feelings, we had to express them fully, honor them, work through them and then, when the time was right, release them.

 

 

6. We began to live more authentically in our relationships with others.

 

 

 

 

 

7. When the time was right, we forgave unconditionally those we felt had wronged us, and thus freed ourselves of years of bottled-up hurt and resentment.

8. When we were strong enough, we conducted our own inventory of ways we may have hurt others -- or our part in rejecting and judging others and creating empty, meaningless or even destructive relationships.

 

 

9. As we came to know who we were and gained the ability to ask for what we wanted, we were in a place of strength to enter into a relationship with a woman, or develop an existing relationship.

 

 

 

10. As we attained greater inner healing and came to feel more connection to feeling, we became more in touch with our joy. We became more capable of healthy, mature relationships. We became less easily hurt, less moody and less codependent. We became more authentically ourselves.

 

 

 

Heart Power
What We Did to Effect Change

 

 

 

We began to experience real change once we stopped trying to control our sexual desires and instead began to fulfill the core desires that lay underneath them -- for instance, the need every little boy feels to be affirmed, mentored and loved by fathers and brothers, men and boys. We learned that true change comes from fulfilling true needs, not just from resisting unwanted urges.

 

We found that, for us, lust for another man often had its roots in envy of traits that we felt lacking in ourselves. We also found that it was often a "sideways expression" of a legitimate need to connect platonically with other men. Since we were unwilling or unable to meet that need in authentic, direct ways, the unmet need would intensify, much as hunger and thirst intensify the longer they are ignored. It would then express itself "sideways," through a false emotion -- lust -- that feels more urgent and intense, making it far more difficult to ignore.

 

Think of the young child who doesn't get what he wants when he says "please," so he resorts to a tantrum. A man's "inner child" may respond the same way. Imagine a man's inner child quietly begging, "Please, I need buddies! I need healthy non-sexual touch with another guy! I need my father's love! I need time to just play, especially with friends, instead of working so hard! Will you take care of me?" And the adult self responds, "Don't be so childish. I'm a grown man. I can't ask other men for those things. Besides, no one wants to be my friend. So just keep quiet and go away."

So what does the man's inner child do? He has a tantrum. He aligns with lust to get his own way. He insists, "I WILL connect with males and with my masculinity one way or another, whether you like it or not." Lust kicks in, and so the man gives in to the inner child's tantrum. The tyrant child gets his way because the adult self refuses to nurture him.

 

So it was with us. We eventually learned we had to take a completely different approach. Instead of trying to stop or resist unwanted behaviors and feelings, we had to preempt and replace them with something nurturing and satisfying. We had to start paying attention to the legitimate needs of the inner child.

 

For us, some of the most common authentic needs underlying homosexual desires were needs:

 

1. for male affirmation, attention and acceptance

2. for male association; for a male community or "tribe"

3. to feel like "one of the guys"

4. for healthy, platonic touch

5. for physical exertion and connection to the body

6. to play, especially in the company of other men

7. to connect authentically to feeling, and especially for a safe place to feel and express anger and grief

8. to connect authentically with others, especially men; being "real" with them; being fully seen and heard

9. to connect to Spirit

10. to find a higher purpose in life beyond serving only our own self and our own needs.

 

At first, we often resisted facing our fears and letting down our defenses. Our defensive detachment and other defense mechanisms existed, after all, to protect us from getting hurt. But they were no longer serving us. The walls we had built around us to keep us safe had become a prison rather than a protection. So we began to let down the defensive walls and to experiment with taking the actions of authentic need fulfillment. And soon enough, this began to be an immensely rewarding part of A M.A.N.S. Journey. A life of self-denial -- of failed attempts at willpower and self-control -- began to transform into a life of self actualization.

 

Heart Power

 

In their powerful book, "Willpower is Not Enough: Why We Don't Succeed At Change,"authors Dean Byrd and Mark Chamberlain write that efforts at using willpower alone to change any unwanted human behavior do not work over the long term. This is because willpower is the power of the mind ("mind over matter"), while it is actually the heart that is the source of emotion and true motivation. The authors write:

 

"We need rely on willpower (or mind-power) only to the extent that our hearts are not in what we're doing. Problems of self-control can be conceptualized as battles between the mind and the heart. The heart feels like doing one thing, but the mind thinks better of it" (page 23-24).

 

In fact, the authors write, continued reliance on willpower alone can actually worsen the resistance/indulgence/resolution cycle and help keep it alive, thus actually fuelling unwanted desires (page 5-6). Instead, those who succeed at changing unwanted behaviors, addictions or self-destructive cycles of any type are those who learn to access the powerful, motivating power of the heart.

 

"One way to bring (mind and heart) into agreement is to find another, higher motivation, something that will engage your heart so thoroughly it will supersede the bad habit or attitude you're trying to control…As counselors, we have seen many people change from fighting the problems in their life to earnestly, even passionately pursuing positive alternatives" (page 27).

 

The authors quote Nazi concentration camp survivor Victor Frankl, who wrote in his moving book, Man's Search for Meaning, that those who survived the camps frequently relied on a vision of a greater meaning in life or higher purpose for their suffering. They quote from Frankl, who in the midst of unimaginable horrors, had a vision of his future:

 

"'Suddenly I saw myself standing on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room. In front of me sat an attentive audience on comfortable upholstered seats. I was giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp! All that oppressed me at that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote view of science. By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation.'"

 

Byrd and Chamberlain continue:

"Incredibly, this kind of clarity of purpose provided Frankl and other prisoners with the fuel to live on" (page 35-36).

"The simplest of positive purposes can swell to displace what is destructive in our lives….We are more fully ourselves when we are in the midst of doing good rather than evil. In essence, the process of gaining more self-control and increasing in righteousness is not one of changing from who we are. Rather, we are changing to who we are (page 34).

 

"We can find the power to change when we find a purpose outside ourselves…(and) displace bad in our lives with good (page 29). To find something to which we can devote ourselves wholeheartedly is to discover meaning that transcends our own existence - something outside ourselves (page 30). We each have numerous desires in our life. The key is not so much to squelch the bad ones as to nourish the good (page 36).

 

"It is possible to stay motivated, to keep our hearts engaged in our attempts to change. But to do so, we must have an alternative that is meaningful to us - and meaningful not only in an intellectual sense but in a deeply emotional one as well. Let your vision of that positive alternative be clearer than the temptation of your old life; then you will be well on the path to change. You can do anything when your heart is in it! (page 37)"

 

What We Did to Effect Change

 

Here, then, are various changes that many of us made:

 

1. We began discovering our true needs underlying our homosexual thoughts and desires.

 

 

 

 

 

2. Based on our increased self-awareness of our true, core needs, we conducted a personal "needs inventory" and identified specific, fulfilling alternative ways we could consistently and proactively meet those authentic needs in constructive, healing ways.

 

 

 

 

3. We stopped putting our energies toward resisting unwanted or self-destructive

behaviors and thought patterns, and instead began to put our energies toward replacing and preempting unwanted desires by meeting rather than suppressing core needs.

 

 

 

 

4. If we suffered from "touch deprivation," we learned to meet our need for platonic physical connection with men through physical activities, therapeutic massage, or by asking for and receiving non-sexual hugging, holding or other appropriate touch from heterosexual male friends, mentors and family members

 

5. We began to envision a greater good or higher purpose for our lives. We began to put our energies into running toward the good rather than running from the bad.

 

 

 

6. We developed and even rehearsed a specific "crisis intervention plan" for times when sexual desire or other longing would seem overwhelming.

 

 

 

7. For a time (as long as it took), we made fulfillment of authentic core needs, and healing from unwanted sexual attractions generally, the absolute top priority in our lives.

 

 

8. As we established a pattern of consistently meeting our authentic, core needs and desires in healing, constructive ways, we began to find space in our hearts to care more for the needs and desires of others -- including current or prospective female partners. And that, we discovered, was an imperative component of the ability to love a woman romantically.

 

 

 

 

Surrender is an integral part of every aspect of A M.A.N.S. Journey out of homosexuality. We found, for instance, that:

 

 

 

 

But surrender is more than a component of developing masculinity, developing emotional authenticity, and fulfilling true needs. Surrender is necessary, even vital, in and of itself for any man who seeks to be free from persistent homosexual attractions, for this reason: A man with homosexual attractions will usually maintain them unless he consciously surrenders them. The psyche can incorporate homosexuality into an otherwise emotionally healthy life. Without surrender, it is possible for a man to be emotionally mature, living the principles of masculinity, authenticity, and need fulfillment, and remain homosexual. With surrender, his heart begins to change.

 

What do we mean by surrender? Surrender may be understood first by what it is not. It is not resistance nor suppression. It is not willpower, nor self-control. It is not fighting, nor swearing that we will never do it again (whatever "it" is). It is not giving in, nor even giving up (unless one is giving up white-knuckled resistance, willpower and fighting).

 

Rather, surrender is letting go. It is choosing to release specific obstacles - whatever is holding you back and hurting you. It is a deliberate mental, emotional, and spiritual attitude of giving away these obstacles to God (or Spirit, or a Higher Power) in a spirit of humble trust in the wisdom, strength and goodness of the Divine Power.

 

When we talk of surrender, we mean, first and foremost, the yielding of our own self-will to a Higher Power or Higher Good. It is the essential experience of submitting to and trusting in the Divine Will -- living for something better or nobler than one's own selfish pleasure. A critical component of this type of surrender is the surrender of control (or the illusion of control, more accurately) while giving over the power to direct one's life into the hands of the Divine. To surrender is to replace resistance with acceptance, suppression with submission.

 

Surrender is the cornerstone principle of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, and other Anonymous programs. Of course, homosexuality is not addiction, and addiction is not homosexuality (although a great many people who start down the path of homosexual behavior do become addicted to the sexual "rush" of meeting needs in homosexual ways). But millions of people across the world have found that these principles of surrender, yielding and submission to the Divine Will apply to every type of struggle imaginable.

 

The Twelve Steps state:

 

 

 

 

True surrender requires us to release anything from our lives that prevents change from happening -- any place, person, relationship, group, practice, habit, defense, idea, belief, way of being, anything. To surrender is to let go of let go of ideas, prejudices, defenses, old resentments, and behaviors that block change.

 

This attitude of release is illustrated with a native folk tale of how monkeys can be caught in the wild with a very simple trap. Fruit is placed in a trap with a hole just large enough for the monkey to insert his open palm. But once the monkey grasps the fruit, his fist is too large to remove without letting go of his prize. All that is needed to free himself is to release the fruit, and his hand will slip easily out of the trap. But determined and angry, he fights against the trap, trying harder and harder to have the fruit and his freedom too. In his stubbornness, he loses both (See Sexaholics Anonymous, page 85).

 

The book Alcoholics Anonymous explains:

"Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us" (page 40).

 

In the book Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior, authors Martha Nibley Beck and John C. Beck write: "The very common phenomenon of berating an addict for not having enough willpower is…both incorrect and very destructive, for willpower is a coercive agent. As such, it intensifies the conflict" within the individual rather than freeing him from it " (p. 188).

 

Authors Dean Byrd and Mark Chamberlain add in their book, Willpower is Not Enough:

"The first and most obvious problem with depending exclusively on willpower to resist temptation is that, all too often, it simply fails us. The second…is that it may actually serve to worsen the cycle of temptation, where we constantly vacillate between self-denial and self-indulgence…Ironically, our constantly renewed resolution can actually fuel the forbidden desire" (p. 5-6)

 

The solution, then, is not willpower but surrender:

"When we surrendered out of our own enlightened self-interest, it became the magic key that opened the prison door and set us free" (Sexaholics Anonymous, page 83).

 

Surrendering Homosexual Behavior

 

"Everything begins with (sexual) sobriety. Without sobriety, there is no program of recovery" (Sexaholics Anonymous, p. 77).

 

Critics and skeptics argue that, sure, anyone can stop engaging in outward homosexual behavior, but that hardly constitutes inward change when the man still has homosexual feelings and is simply suppressing them. Abstinence alone is not change, they say.

We disagree.

 

 

 

 

In the book Desires in Conflict, Joe Dallas writes:

"Some people argue that behavior change isn't really change at all. But they're wrong. When a person's behavior changes, his life changes. If a man has been a drunkard for 20 years, then joins Alcoholics Anonymous and stays sober, he has definitely changed. His sobriety will have an impact on all parts of his life, improving his attitude, relationships, and job performance. Will an occasional desire for a drink nullify his claim to have changed? Hardly. So it is with (you). If you've been homosexually active and reach a point of consistent sexual sobriety, you'll have changed. Conscience, confidence and self control will all have been affected by your abstinence. There's no area of your life that will not feel the impact of it" (p.46).

 

Some of us found that discontinuing our homosexual relationships and behaviors was an important first step in our change, in order to begin to "dry out" from our sex "drug," discovering underlying needs that we had been meeting artificially through homosexual behavior, and become more sensitized to feeling God's love and guidance.

 

Others of us found we were not ready to break from those gay lovers, friends, places and habits until we had grown through at least some of the process of developing masculinity, developing authenticity, and finding alternative, meaningful ways to fulfill our underlying needs.

 

But whichever approach we took -- beginning to withdraw from homosexual relationships and behavior at the outset, or doing so later in the process -- one way or another the time came when we were ready to put our homosexual lives behind us. Many of us found it scary. Some of us experienced some real sadness about letting go of some of the relationships and activities we had, frankly, enjoyed. We had doubts about our ability to sustain change and even second thoughts about supposed "opportunities" we would miss….dreams of fantasy relationships that might someday finally feel right and bring us real joy at last (though they seldom if ever had before)….and concerns about our ability to cope with life without pornography, homosexual sex or other lust.

 

But universally, this we knew: A homosexual identity and life were not working for us, and we would never really change as long as we continued to identify as homosexual or engage in homosexual behaviors.

 

But we didn't give. We surrendered.

 

We found that we need to make two things happen at once. Instead of suppressing and abstaining, we needed to submit and fulfill. When we felt homosexual lust kick in, we had to immediately surrender it up to our Higher Power, and at the same time we needed to discover the underlying, non-sexual core need and work to fulfill it in a non-sexual way, instead of through homosexual lust.

 

One man who has overcome homosexuality describes his own experience with surrender (as opposed to suppression) and need fulfillment:

"When I was in the throes of withdrawal from my lust cycles, I had to learn a whole new way of responding to lust. Instead of gritting my teeth and clenching my fists, trying to force the feeling away, as I had always done before, I would close my eyes and imagine a channel of light going up from my body to the heavens. I would open my palms toward heaven and say something like, 'God, I release this feeling over to you. If I try to resist and fight it, I will lose, because it is stronger than I am. So I give it to you, and trust you to handle it for me instead.' In submitting my desires to God's greater power, the urgency and control they held over me lessened enough that I could make a phone call to a mentor or friend, and ask for support. I would immediately then make plans to meet my authentic needs for companionship and connection in a non-sexual, fulfilling way."

 

Joe Dallas writes that, as long as a person continues to engage in homosexual acts, the needs they fulfill will remain repressed. The needs can't be identified as long as homosexual behavior covers them up and keeps them unconscious. And as long as they remain unidentified, they can't be recognized and fulfilled in more legitimate ways.

"When homosexual behavior is removed, the needs behind it become more acute than ever. That's why many people have such a difficult time abstaining from it. It's not just sexual temptation that draws them back, but the desire to satisfy these needs in the old, tried-and-true way….

 

"Suppose a man's homosexual behavior satisfied his need for a nurturing male to take care of him. He turns away from this behavior, only to find that he needs such a nurturer more than ever. But the only way he's gotten that nurturing in the past is through homosexuality. He hasn't yet learned nonsexual ways of getting what he needs, so he goes through a season of waiting while the need continues to throb away….But that's exactly how legitimate needs are eventually satisfied! First they make themselves known. Only then can a person plan legitimate, nonsexual ways to satisfy them" (Desires in Conflict, p. 119-121).

 

Complicating this scenario even further is the fact that the man in transition out of homosexuality is often working a program of authenticity and overcoming his defense mechanisms (such as work-aholism or other forms of escapism) and "false emotions" or inhibitory feelings (like shame, depression or anxiety). He may be digging into his past to understand the source of some of these feelings and coping mechanisms in order to understand their origins and how they have served him. This kind of self-exploration is sure to expose emotional pain -- pain that, in the past, he has covered up with homosexual behavior whenever it became too uncomfortable.

 

So it should not be surprising that some of us actually experienced an increase in homosexual feelings and lust when we stirred up our feelings and exposed long-suppressed pain. This could be distressing, and make us question whether our efforts were productive or counter-productive. But we came to see that it was a necessary part of the journey if we were to dig out our homosexual problems from the root, instead of dealing only with the surface behavior.

 

What We Did to Effect Change:

 

Here, then, are some of the changes that many of us made:

 

1. We identified and then surrendered false beliefs that kept us stuck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God - to submit our own desires to his. We prayed at least daily for knowledge of his will for us and the desire and ability to carry it out.

 

 

 

3. We made a decision to surrender all forms of homosexual behavior and all associations with a homosexual life. We took the actions of withdrawal, surrender and escape.

 

 

 

 

 

4. When we felt homosexual urges or desires, we surrendered them up to God by saying a prayer of surrender or submission, giving away the thought or desire instead of fighting it, and asking God to take it away. We then sought to identify the core emotional need underneath the homosexual desire, and took immediate and deliberate steps to meet the need in non-sexual, emotionally fulfilling ways.

 

 

5. We explored any defenses or resistance to change that we might be holding onto, whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally, and worked a program of surrender for each obstacle or barrier we could identify.

 

 

6. After we had fully experienced and worked through past hurts, we became willing to forgive unconditionally those we felt had wronged us. We thereby freed ourselves from years of pent-up hurt and resentment.

 

7. We recognized our own weaknesses and took responsibility for our own part in creating problems in our lives. We became willing to have God remove all our personal defects and humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.

 

8. We acknowledged our own wrongs to those we had harmed and made appropriate amends, without expecting anything in return.

 

9. We surrendered to being in process.

 

 

 

10. We came to peace with an imperfect world.