The Man Behind the Walls

In my previous two posts, I've been talking about some of my anxieties and fears around women, which I think quite possibly has to do--if only in part--with why my opposite-sex attractions are not as direct or physical as my same-sex attractions.  As I've continually tried to make clear, I'm not saying that women are to blame for my difficulties, as many women have been good to me, especially my wife.  But, the same as a woman who has been mistreated by just one man or a group of men may have issues revolving around men in general, even if she's rational enough to know that's not the men's fault, so too I have some scars I have to work on regarding women, who as an overall group bear absolutely no fault for it.

In the post immediately before this one, I had clarified that I believe the first of the three posts was pointing to two things.  The first was that I feared that women, upon seeing my basic personality and traits, would not see me as masculine, but as "harmless," which I argued is mutually exclusive with being masculine.  In this post, I'm exploring the other thing.

The second thing, the thing that touches on a very deep insecurity, is the thought that even if the average woman can see me as a man, a "lion," upon a first or surface impression of me, she certainly wouldn't if she saw the real me.  This is something I'm surprised I ever overcame with my wife, but somehow I did, and rather early in our friendship.  Before meeting my wife, I had always thought I'd just have to keep up a wall, a facade, in order to be taken seriously by a woman.  Even when women have born their hearts and souls to me, I have feared that if I did the same in return they might "see how pathetic I am," and lose respect for me, so I've kept the walls up.

I'm hiding somewhere on the other side.

Here's how I am when the walls come totally down:  I can be petty, I whine and complain, I get upset over little things that seem childish, and I am moved to a tearful sorrow ridiculously easily.  I'm mushy and sentimental, the sort of guy that wants to say "Awwwwwwwwww" over anything remotely cute or adorable, or over anything sad.  I cry pretty easily at times, whether at sad movies, or sometimes even over inconveniences that I've somehow exaggerated into tragedy.  I can be confused, inconsistent, passive aggressive, just plain passive, timid, obsessive, worried about what people think of me, scared, and often a nervous wreck.  "You big baby!" is a phrase that many might be tempted to throw at me as they watch me freak out or complain about some seemingly trivial slight or problem.  And that's not just on a bad day.  I'm not saying these things display themselves dramatically on a daily basis, but on any given day it's probably easy, for someone I really allow in, to see those traits in some capacity.

*In the past, I've had women (not a majority, and not constantly, but enough to leave a mark) mock or criticize me because of these traits, in sharp and hurtful ways.  Often enough, this was done not in private, but in front of other women and sometimes even in front of my fellow men.  So it's relevant that I didn't see most other guys I knew being treated this way.  When I've described these interactions to my wife, she pointed out, with a woman's perspective, that they were treating me not as a man, but as girls will treat other girls if they think they're too weak, whiny, or whatever; her words make sense to me, and for obvious reasons that explains why it was so emasculating.  In fact, there was a period of time in my life when I received sharper and more "public" criticisms from women than from any of my fellow men, who--for all the stereotypes of men being less empathetic than women--were surprisingly understanding, perhaps because they, being men and knowing that they could be big messes inside too, didn't feel that they were solid rocks of manhood themselves.

Might be a little uncomfortable for a special lady to cuddle with, anyway.

So it's easy, now, for me to think that my wife is simply a rare exception to some overwhelming rule about how most women see me.  If I see a woman on the street, I fret that she would laugh me to scorn if she knew how I really am.  I have no temptation, unlike the average guy, to sexualize women at the beach, no matter how skimpy their suits, because how can I be attracted to someone whom I fear--if she was allowed a real glimpse at how I am--would mock me?  I'm not saying that it would be a good thing to struggle with objectifying women at the beach or on the TV screen, but often blessings are mixed with curses:  The blessing of not having that struggle comes, for me personally, with the curse of hardly being able to see the feminine body as a sexually magnetic thing at all.

But it's only natural, if on average I would feel unsafe letting women in, that I wouldn't have any sexual urges inherently tied to the female form either.  Because one (among others) important part of sex, a part that I think subconsciously underlies sexual attraction--yes, even in men--is the total vulnerability.  In sharing your naked body, you are expressing a deeper sharing, the sharing of your naked soul, heart, and mind.  If some subconscious part of me recoils at the thought of being able to bear my deep nakedness with women in general (with my wife appearing to me to be an exception that only proves the rule), then it's normal that the general concept of sharing bodily nakedness with a woman would fail to arouse me.

To highlight all this, I think it's worth mentioning the way I perceive men, whose bodies do tend to hold more potential for evoking a response from me.  When I look at a man to whom I'm attracted, I tell myself, correctly or not, that somewhere inside he is "like me," a belief helped along by the fact that we're both men.  I believe that he has the same messy person in there as I do.  Even if he doesn't display the traits I do, I tell myself he knows he's just as capable of it.  Women, in my imagination, have some unrealistic idea that men are emotionally steady and have less concern with such petty things than I do, so that a man like myself is "less than" a man; but if I'm telling myself a man is in some sense the same as I, then he can be trusted not to have such unrealistic expectations.  He's safer.  Now in our culture, I know plenty of men are cruel and mock guys like me, just as I know that in reality plenty of women are not at all like the few who have given me such a hard time--in High School, in fact, my worst tormentors were guys, not girls (for that reason, though, I think it shocked me and cut me much more deeply when girls did partake in the same behavior toward me).  But somehow, my immediate gut reaction to an attractive man is to think of him as being able to empathize with me due to "knowing what it's like," where my immediate reaction to such a woman, unless she somehow proves otherwise like my wife did, is to think she'll find me "pathetic" and not "man enough" for her.

Notice:  Losers will be dismissed out of hand!

Yet again, I don't fully know what to do to change my anxiety.  It's been years since any woman has consistently treated me in a way that made me feel emasculated, and I was never treated that way by the general female population.  In fact, I had many of these anxieties before any female treated me poorly, with the short span of time when I did experience it merely reinforcing these fears, not being their source.  Since puberty I always had the fear that, in order to have a significant woman in my life take me seriously, I would have to become "another Josh," a Josh who would be more traditionally regarded as masculine, and I could never take that persona totally off in front of her, not even if we married.  I don't know where this impression comes from.

This time, though, there is one thing I think I do know.  It truly is masculine to exercise self control.  When it comes to the litany of faults I mentioned before, for the ones that are actual flaws--such as being petty or whiny, as opposed to the neutral traits that our culture merely considers unmanly, such as being sentimental or "too" emotionally expressive, which I don't consider inherently unmanly at all--it's the mark of a man to not simply say "Well, that's just who I am!" and expect that women (or men, for that matter) will just accept it; rather it is his mark to work at changing those things.  I'm not excusing anyone who would treat me poorly for these flaws.  But I'm saying that, even if it is their responsibility to recognize that treating me poorly wouldn't help me overcome such flaws, it's my responsibility, by God's Grace, to be transformed.  When the day comes that I've made progress there, the day when "the man behind the mask," who I am in my own home or among those I trust the most, is someone whom I feel is manlier, perhaps the general thought of letting a woman see him won't be so scary.


__________________
*Note:  This is not a "blame game."  The marked paragraph is not about blaming anybody nor holding them responsible.  Any such incidents happened a long time ago, besides which I take responsibility for my own reactions, feelings, and the things I've internalized.

Man Enough for a Woman?

Except for a five year period of time when I thought first that I'd be a priest, then that I'd be a monk, I always dreamed of marriage ever since I was old enough to show any real interest in romance and dating.  I wanted to have the ideal relationship, a happy family, and live out the dream and adventure of life with my lady love by my side.

I am honored and happy to have found just that, with my wife.  There was a time that I thought this wouldn't be possible.  And yet, even now, I have the sense--and I tell my wife this all the time--that I really hit the one in six billion jackpot, that I could never have met anyone else I would have married.  In one sense, my wife should be rightly flattered by this.  Because one aspect of it is that she alone is a woman who "lives up" to all the things I ever dreamed of in a woman...

But there is another aspect of my thinking "I could never have married another" that, rather than having to do with my wife's worthiness (which she has in spades) has to do with my own unworthiness as a man.  It's true that I can't imagine, at this point, ever wanting to marry another woman besides my wife.  But if I'm honest, it's also true that I can't imagine any other woman wanting me.  Although I believe that my wife wants me, I feel as if only a woman as wonderful, caring, and selfless as she could be willing to "condescend" to a man like myself:  A man who is "soft," an emotional mess, and even whose positive traits are traditionally associated with being the strong suits of women, while lacking many traits often associated with men.

"I love him because he's like a delicate flower!"
Is probably not the best way to make your guy feel like a man.
(Note:  My wife has never said anything remotely like that,
and I'm sure she'd want to make that clear)

I realize, in fact, that a large part of this has to do with the difficulty I have achieving a certain "charge" that "straight" men often feel toward women.  It's that I just can't see myself as the sort of man that would drive a woman wild; I have a hard time seeing myself as "tall, dark, and handsome," the kind of guy whose woman looks at him as a strong protector, a rock, a leader to whom she can entrust herself.  I remember once, years ago, when a girl spoke of a friend of mine, and her facial expressions and tone of voice suggested an inward "shudder" evoked by being impressed with his masculinity; y'know, "Ooo, what a man!"  I have rarely ever felt that women could see me that way.  If a woman loves or falls for me, my inner narrative goes, it'll only ever be because I was nice enough to her to win her over, not because my masculinity moved her or made her feel in the presence of "a real man," her opposite to whom she was drawn like  magnet.  And so, I think some part of me refused to let women have the kind of raw power over me that they have over the typical "straight" guy, because I did NOT believe I had the opposite equivalent power over women that many of my more traditionally masculine counterparts have.

This is true even with my wife.  She loves me, she constantly gives me reasons to believe that my body and my masculinity make her crazy with attraction to me.  But on some level, I can't believe it.  I just can't believe that she really sees me that way.  I'm not saying she doesn't, but on a gut level I can't convince myself of it.  I can't believe that, when she looks at me, she feels giddy or weak not merely out of love, but because she is a woman in the presence of a man.  I can't shake the feeling that the reasons she likes me are limited to the same reasons that my grandmother or mother might have praised me:  Because I'm sweet, because I'm non-threatening, because I'm kind.  I'm a "good boy."  In fact, some part of me suspects that she's attracted to me specifically because of some of my traits which are traditionally feminine.

I think that a lot of men--including me--have the need to know that women see them as heroic, virile, and "dangerous" in an attractive way.  There is a part of being "man" that includes being wild, unpredictable, and most certainly not "sweet" or "safe."  Of course, we want women to feel safe with us, but precisely because we're dangerous, the way that you feel safe with a bodyguard because he is dangerous; just not to you.  And while it's perfectly fine for a man to do things, even frequently, that are "sweet," I think many of us want to think of sweet as something we do, not something we are.  We want to be warriors, we want to be superheroes, to inspire awe in our women.  I think that often (though I don't speak for everybody) we want to be a sort of "mystery," we want our ladies to see us as "foreign" and different, and we want that to be exactly why they're mad about us.  When a woman sees a man this way, she finds him somehow beyond her ability to "tame," like a wild lion.

And this is a lion's response to the suggestion he can be tamed.

In fact I've often felt that the beauty and essence of men can be captured best by the symbol of a lion.  I might even revisit this in a future post.

But I, on the contrary, have spent a lifetime being the "good boy," or the sweet one.  Women have seen me as about as dangerous as a puppy dog, and so insofar as women have been attracted to me, it has almost seemed to be the way that they're drawn to cute critters.  I am tame.  And thinking of myself that way, and more importantly thinking that women see me that way, is (for lack of a better word) a huge "turn off" when it comes to the fairer sex.  And I have no doubt whatsoever that's part of the reason why, for me personally, my opposite-sex attractions are not nearly so "physical" as my same-sex attractions.  I mentioned in a previous post that sometimes the female form does have an effect on me that's probably similar to what "straight" guys experience.  Well, at those times, I become convinced, for a brief but hopeful period of time, that women can see me as all those masculine things I've mentioned.  I get it in my head, if only momentarily, that a woman could look at me and think "What a MAN!!"

Yet I mostly go on believing that the only reason I was able to marry is because I found the most wonderful woman in the world, one who, despite being worthy of a "real man," was willing to stoop down and take unto herself a mere "good boy."  Or perhaps at times I think that her tastes have been distorted so that she even wants a "good boy" more than "a real man."  If that's not it, then perhaps her own self-esteem issues have convinced her that she's not worthy of a "real man," so she's trained herself to like men like me instead.  If anything, God forbid, were to happen to her while the children were still young, I often say--over her protestations--that I could not seek out another wife.  What other woman is wonderful and selfless enough to settle for me?  What other woman, after getting to know me, wouldn't decide I was a fraud, a false man?

"Wait, dude, is he saying there's something wrong with that?"

When it comes to my ability to see myself with any other woman (at least in any meaningful way), it doesn't matter for its own sake.  I love my wife so much that I don't want a relationship with another woman, even if the entire female population were scrambling for me.  But I can't help but believe that it's unhealthy for me to think that I couldn't get or impress another woman even if I tried.  It's not fair to my wife either, because the more virile I feel, the more I feel like I am "man enough for women" in general, the more physically attracted I am to females, in a direct and acute manner.  And that includes my wife.  So I owe it to her, ironically, to believe that I'm man enough that a woman doesn't have to be equal to her kind and accepting nature in order to want me.

The problem is that I don't know what to do about it.  My wife, as I said, has given me every reason to believe she sees me as a "real man," that she is in awe of my masculinity, that she is moved to inward euphoria when she reflects on my identity as man.  So just receiving this affirmation is clearly not enough.  Somehow I have to believe the things she affirms.  I'm not sure, yet, how to get there.  But I know it's important that I try.


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Note: The next two posts are going to be continuing this theme, so be sure to keep your eyes open for them.

Women, Attraction, and Me

Warning:  In dealing with both sexuality and my struggles, this post is more frank at times compared with some of my other posts dealing with such matters, which are more "polished."  Reader discretion is advised.

In an ironic twist of fate, I actually never thought of myself as "gay"--that is to say, with same-sex attractions to the exclusion of any real opposite-sex attractions-- at least not consistently, until some point during the last year.  That's right, after being married.  I'm going to say, right now, that I think I was wrong to ever come to that conclusion, but right or wrong, I had rarely held that belief about myself before.  There was a brief period of time when I was fifteen, when I first realized I had same-sex attractions, that I actually did consider that I might just be "gay."  But after that there was a three to five year period when I didn't really notice the same-sex attractions at all, and then even after they returned full force and never let up again, I tended to think of myself as having both same-sex and opposite-sex attractions.  By pop-cultural labels (although I don't justify the use of these labels at all) this would make me "bisexual," not "gay."

So what happened?  Why, after so many years of not believing I was exclusively attracted to men, did I finally cave in and say that I wasn't attracted to women, that I loved my wife and enjoyed our intimate life and was attracted to her in certain ways, but that it wasn't a "straight" sort of attraction?  Why?  Because I finally succumbed to the pressure of society's lies about attraction and sexuality.

We live in a culture that is absolutely obsessed with lust and eroticism.  This has become so predominant that it has made its way even into Christian culture.  Christians have, often enough, conceded that sexual attraction must be the same thing as a raw, powerful urge.  Sexual attraction has been reduced to "Which gender would be most likely to 'turn you on' if the person walked into the room naked?"  That's it.  Visual stimulation and raw arousal have become the "litmus test" for sexual attraction.  So, for example, no matter how much I may enjoy being around my wife, no matter how beautiful I may think she is, no matter how much I may love her, no matter how much I may enjoy our sex life and long to engage in it with her, our society (and, sadly, many Christians) would say that I don't have a legitimate sexual attraction to her unless the simple sight of her naked body had the power to arouse me, the way that the image of a nude man might (if the context were sexually charged or suggestive at least; I do not get outright aroused by mere nudity on either gender).

Woah, duuude!  I totally can't even concentrate around
hot girls, man...

Now, I will say that there are times, sometimes more common than others, when I do have the sort of attraction to my wife that society would admit is a genuine sexual attraction.  And because I know my wife feels good about herself when I have those sorts of feelings toward her, I do seek to cultivate that and I hope that such a thing becomes more and more common.  I do want that, even if it's not necessary, because it is nice, it's enjoyable to have those sensations.  So I hope it gets more frequent, with time, and stronger.  Eventually I'd love to consistently have that reaction.

But I think I was wrong to ever believe that I had to experience that in order to believe that all the other ways I have been attracted to her were and are real.  A sexual attraction is simply that:  Attraction toward having sex with someone.  It doesn't matter if the reason you enjoy and desire it is because the very sight of her nude body drives you mad, or because you find the idea of sex with her to be the highest sort of affection, unity, and security with her.  Both are legitimate expressions of genuine sexual attraction.  The former is more raw and immediate, but the second is just as valid.  

I've had that second sort of attraction to women throughout my entire life.  And until I was fifteen years old, and stumbled upon gay pornography, that second sort of attraction was the only kind of attraction I'd had to anyone, and that "anyone" was solely female.  I wasn't all that interested in pornographic portrayals of women, because my attraction to women was more holistic.  I wanted to love a woman, to become one with her, to be by her side, to have us comfortably and lovingly (in marriage) explore one another's bodies just as we explored each other's heart and soul.  I wanted to give of myself to a woman, including my body.  I deeply desired to one day make love to a woman who was my wife.  But it was not a desire that was easily susceptible to the pornographic appeal our culture insists must be part of an attraction, because it was not primarily about certain visual stimuli "driving me crazy."  But did this make it any less real?

Well it says here that--
Oh...rhetorical question...

In recent months, I've finally started to reclaim what I once knew about myself:  That my attraction to women, and my wife in particular, is just as real and valid as any stereotypical "straight" guy's attraction to women.  It may not always look the same as his, nor the same way that my same-sex attraction looks (although, like I said earlier, sometimes it does, and that's happened more often over the past half-year and I have hope it will happen more often still), but that doesn't mean that it "doesn't count."  

It will take me a while, I think, to regain the confidence that my attractions to women do count.  And why?  Because it's taken years to tear down that confidence, so it's reasonable to think it might take years to get back up to it.  As of the time when I was a senior in college, no one could have convinced me that my attraction to women, although it certainly looked different from my attraction to men, was not real.  People who knew me back then can vouch for the way I openly pined for girls, and it was not an act!  But it was different.  While other guys looked at a beautiful girl and might have a reaction "below the waist," I--although I could certainly muster such a reaction and while throughout that period I often thought of a hypothetical "wife" during my struggles with masturbation--had a reaction primarily in my chest.  While other guys looked at girls as potentially "hot," to me they were "amazing" and "magical."  

So it took the greater part of a decade to reach the point to where I no longer thought my brand of attraction to women was legitimate.  I never really found myself addicted to "straight" porn, but had a terrible habit with "gay" porn; an empty meaningless fling with a woman wouldn't have done anything for me, while an empty meaningless fling with a guy (despite still not being nearly as appealing as a meaningful connection with him) did have a certain raw appeal that had no counterpart in females.  I let myself fall into the trap of thinking that my porn habits and the question of whose body by itself would provoke my desire the most was the key to determining my sexuality.  So more and more, I felt that maybe my opposite-sex attractions were an illusion, wishful thinking.  Less and less did I consider myself attracted to both genders until, one day, I nervously confided in my wife that maybe I had no actual attraction to women at all, aside from the capability of enjoying sex with her and obviously loving her.  It could take at least just as long, and be just as rocky a path, to get back to where I once was:  Confident that my attractions to women "count," even if they differ from the average male's.  

There are some things, however, that have given me pause, and have tempted me to sabotage my own efforts at recovering my full awareness of the validity of my opposite-sex attractions.  During my time of thinking I was simply "gay" I developed, as a consolation, a passion for one day being a beacon to others who were exclusively same-sex attracted and yet who were, like myself, people of faith. "This is possible:  Marriage to an opposite-sex spouse, having a family, without compromising traditional Christian values; you can have that even if you're gay, and it can be loving and authentic and real."  And I still believe it's possible.  Examples such as Josh Weed (look him up) make me believe that.  But if I am not "gay," then I am not an example of that possibility myself.  

Oh no!  How will they get along without your
shining example?!

Another such thing is fear that I am just kidding myself about the opposite-sex attractions.  That tempts me to just decide my attractions to men are exclusive, so that at least I won't have the experience of being disappointed if I find out the attractions to women are an illusion.  I'm an obsessive person, by temperament, so I'm constantly fretting that maybe I'm engaging in wishful thinking, as if I only imagine my attraction to women, even if I have more moments lately where that attraction seems more acute, jarring, and physically strong, as the typical "straight" or "bi" guy's attractions to women are.  It's easier to just call those flukes.  Because it would require less work to simply assume the most difficult reality is the true one, then anything else can seem like a mental house of cards, fragile and prone to collapse.  I get scared of that collapse, and run right back to thinking "No, I'm just gay; I'm happily married, love my 'private' life with my wife, and love her dearly, but I'm still 'gay,'" because it's easier to just "accept" that than it is to summon and maintain the mental energy that goes into overcoming my obsessive fretting and worrying in order to have confidence that it might be otherwise.  

In the end, the state of my attractions to women is not simple.  As a flawed human being, sometimes a particularly confused and stressed one, I reserve the right to be inconsistent.  But sometimes I do muster up the courage to not only resist but outright defy the definitions society places on what it means to be attracted to someone.  Sometimes, I feel on the cusp of some paradigm shift that will truly liberate me.  Will it make me "straight?"  Probably not.  My attractions to men may be here to stay no matter what my attraction to women is like (although to be sure I can integrate those attractions into my life in ways that are healthy, acknowledged, but not sexually acted upon).  But maybe I can find it within me to not put my sexuality in a "box," and to know that, whatever labels society might like to put on it, it may well be more malleable and fluid than labels could ever suggest. 

________

Note:  The article "Against Heterosexuality, by First Things, is an argument that labels and categories surrounding sexuality, even including the so-called natural "heterosexual" orientation, are all artificial constructs anyway that actually do harm to traditional Christian sexual ethics.  I quite agree with this article, whatever my own sexuality may look like at any given time.  So it's worth a read!