Developmental experiences
A myriad of social and psychological factors influence a child's development, such as relationships with family and peers, ability to identify with masculinity or femininity, the degree to which emotional needs are fulfilled, feelings of self-worth, and early sexual experiences.
Professionals agree that environment influences a child in significant ways. Your family, friends, society, and experiences influence how you feel, how you view life, and how you act. Dr. William Consiglio refers to this myriad of social and psychological factors as a "conspiracy of factors," meaning that many factors "conspired" or came together in the right amounts at the right time to divert sexual desires in you as a developing child toward other children. (Consiglio, p. 59) Some of these factors include your relationship with your family and peers, your ability to identify with masculinity or femininity, the degree to which your emotional needs are fulfilled, your feelings of self-worth, and early sexual experiences.
Relationship with father
When Jason first tried to understand how his same-sex attractions had developed, he didn’t think his family was dysfunctional. They loved each other and his father did not beat them. They lived in peace and love and were actively religious people. However, he later came to realize that these good things did not guarantee that all his emotional needs would be met.
It is important that a boy have a healthy emotional relationship with his father or with another significant male and that a girl have a healthy emotional relationship with her mother or with another significant female. (This is much more than Sigmund Freud’s theory that a homosexual male child is the product of a strong mother and a passive, indifferent, or hostile father.) The boy needs to feel love from his father and needs to identify with him. It is through this male bonding that a child develops a sense of himself as an individual and as a male. If this relationship was not functional for you, the needs that would normally be met through it may remain unmet.
This bonding may not have occurred if your father was physically or emotionally uninvolved in your life as a child, or the bond may have been broken if he was punishing or authoritarian. Since this can be very painful, you may not have wanted to reestablish the connection. Even if he tried to build a good relationship, you may have prevented it out of fear of further hurt. Dr. Elizabeth Moberly of Cambridge University refers to this as defensive detachment. (Moberly, p. 6) As a child, you may have defended against further trauma by blocking yourself from relating normally with your father, and in so doing, unknowingly insured that your needs for attachment with him would not be met. It may have become an approach-avoidance conflict. The drive for a renewed attachment showed your need for love from him, but the defensive detachment prevented the attachment and so the needs continued unmet.
As a child, your interpretation of this relationship was critical. Even if your father was available and loved you, if you did not perceive that love or could not connect with him, there could have been a deficit. There is a difference between being loved and feeling loved. The more sensitive and the less able to relate to your father, the greater the chance of a relationship problem. To children, parents are their source of being, and if the attachment to them is disrupted, their very being feels endangered. If you became hurt as a child, you may have become unwilling to trust and may have learned to repress the need for attachment. You may have then distanced yourself from your father and later carried it over to men in general by avoiding closeness with male peers. If this is true in your case, you became emotionally needful as a result of not having the supportive, affectionate relationships required to develop a good sense of identity. When these psychological needs remain unfulfilled, although the boy has grown to be a man, you are still essentially a child trying to fill basic emotional needs. In many respects, you may still be a dependent child who needs to be loved by his father and not yet an adult with adult emotional needs.
To learn more about the father-son relationship and defensive detachment, read Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic by Elizabeth R. Moberly.
Relationship with mother
For a boy, the relationship with his mother is also important. A mother can either reinforce and strengthen a boy’s relationship with his father or she can dominate and minimize the father’s role. A strong relationship with your mother is not a problem unless it gets in the way of a strong relationship with your father. In the triangle of relationships between the boy, mother, and father, the three sometimes become imbalanced. If the father-mother relationship was not healthy, you may have missed out on learning what a husband-wife relationship should be. Further, you may have tried to take care of the emotional needs of your mother and become a surrogate male companion to her. If this disordered mother-son relationship occurred, you would not have been able to develop a normal male image as a boy, nor would the emotional needs have been met as a son from your mother. Needless to say, you also would not have gotten your emotional needs met from the father-son relationship. If this happened, you may have become enmeshed with your mother, in part to compensate for not having the emotional support from your father.
For more information on these disordered relationships, you may refer to chapter four of The Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian, audio book, Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Auburn, CA, 1996.
Gender identity
As a boy develops, it is important to gain a healthy sense of self as a man. In normal development, the concept of masculinity (what it means to be a man) is internalized before puberty by interaction with, and validation from, other boys and men. If you were confused about what it means to be a man or did not feel affirmed in your masculinity, you may have internalized the concept of masculinity in unhealthy ways with frustrating results. If this happened, you likely did not realize that anything abnormal was happening. As you entered puberty and sexual feelings emerged, they may have become confused with your masculine longings.
Having diminished feelings of masculinity does not mean that a boy or man feels feminine—that is the case for only a small percentage of males. There is a considerable difference between feeling inadequate as a male and feeling feminine. Many men who experience same-sex attraction are masculine in appearance and action. They simply have not affirmed within themselves their validity as a man.
Boys who exhibit less masculine behaviors and prefer feminine things have a higher chance of developing same-gender attractions during the socialization process. (Hockenberry and Billingham, pp. 475–87) Dr. Richard Green reports that although more than half of the boys who show pronounced effeminate behavior develop same-sex attractions, a substantial minority of them does not. He suggests that the boy’s behavior, along with contributing life experiences, can predispose them toward developing attractions toward the same gender. Dr. Judd Marmor wrote, "Thus, a little boy whose behavior is effeminate, who does not like competitive athletics, and who prefers music and art, may be disappointing to a macho father, who tends to reject the boy and distance himself from him. The mother may respond by overprotecting her son. Such reactions disturb the boy’s capacity to identify positively with his father and cause him to over-identify with his mother. He may ultimately then develop homosexual erotic responses which are reinforced by later experiences." (Marmor, p. 6)
Defensive detachment may also express itself in the development of gender identity. The effeminacy of some men with homosexual attractions and the quasi-masculinity of some women with homosexual attractions are examples of defensive detachment from the person’s gender. They feel the need to identify with their own gender, but they reject it because they perceive it to be harsh or hurtful, and they prevent its normal development in a defensive way. In these cases, the development of their identity as male and female was likely stopped at an early stage of development.
Male emotional needs
As a boy, your need for the love and identification with other males was a normal, legitimate requirement every boy has; your needs may have been greater than average. These needs would usually be met by your father or another significant male during early childhood and later reinforced by peers, teachers, and society as a whole. If your perfectly natural needs for love, acceptance, and identification with other males were not fulfilled, you may have developed insecurities that now hold you back from legitimately fulfilling them. You may long for the companionship, love, and acceptance of male peers, but when it is offered you resist because of fear of hurt or rejection. You may then feel hurt that the opportunity for companionship and attention has passed you by. You may secretly fear that you are not worthy of companionship or attention and therefore stay where it is safe but lonely rather than venture out to interact with other men.
Many report that during childhood they felt different from their peers. You may have been a loner and didn’t play the rough games that boys commonly play. You may have had some friends, but wished for more and felt unable or unworthy of more substantial relationships that were important to you. If this describes you, your attraction to other males may be rooted in the need to identify with and be accepted by other males and feel part of a group of buddies. At a time critical for making friends, your life may have been disrupted by a medical problem or a move to a new neighborhood, or overprotective parents may have interfered with peer relationships. If you had limited contact with other boys, you may not have identified with them sufficiently in healthy ways, but anticipated rejection and expected you would not fit in. You desperately wanted acceptance and comfort from these ideal friends, but instead developed feelings of loneliness and longing.
If you felt alienated from other boys, you may have become attracted to them as an opposite. Watching from the sidelines, you admired the boys and wished you could be like them. Even as an adult, you may be attracted to men who look or dress the way you wish you did. If you are young and carefree, you may envy a professional man who is responsible and mature. And if you are the mature professional, you may wish you could be young and carefree.
This longing for a friend can be intense and may easily turn to adoration and idolization. One day in high school, I remember walking by the gym just as the track team was returning from a meet. I remember noticing one particular boy who was shirtless and sweaty, and in that brief moment, I saw my ideal of perfect masculinity. I wondered what made the difference between him and me. Although he was my age and in some of my classes, I wondered how he could be on the track team and be so manly, and I was not. I admired him for being an athlete. He was everything I wished I was. Those were the beginnings of my feelings of envy toward other men. Although it happened twenty-five years ago, I remember the incident as vividly as if it happened yesterday. Those kinds of feelings and longings can have significant impact in our lives.
"Mysterious [males] are those who possess enigmatic masculine qualities that both perplex and allure," writes Joseph Nicolosi. "Such [males] are overvalued and even idealized, for they are the embodiment of qualities that the [individual] wishes he had attained for himself." (Nicolosi, 1991, p. 213) As you entered puberty and sexual feelings emerged, this intense envy could have turned to sexual lust, and if you were not able to fill your need for love and acceptance through brotherly relating, you may have begun to seek it through sexual relating. (Matheson, 1993, p. 2) Homosexual behavior may be an attempt to complete your masculine identity as you try to possess valued masculine attributes through sexual intimacy with other males. It may be an effort to solve the mystery of masculinity that arises from the perception of being unlike other men. And it may also be a simple escape from your inadequacies and pain. In the heat of passion, you can momentarily believe any fantasy—that you are beautiful, masculine, loved, and accepted. (Matheson, 1993, p. 3-4)
These underlying emotional needs are the same for all men whether they have same-sex attractions or not. The homosexual drive is actually a drive to fulfill the emotional need to relate to and be accepted by other men. "Love among those of the same sex is right and good," explain Drs. Thomas and Ann Pritt. "Only the sexualization of the attraction is inappropriate." (Pritt, p. 55) This attraction to other men is a reparative drive and is actually an attempt to resolve the problem, and not the problem itself. The core problem is not homosexual, but homosocial. It is a continual attempt to remedy earlier deficits and fulfill the social and emotional needs that still exist. The fulfillment of these unmet needs for love and identification can only be solved through nonsexual relationships with other men. The attractions will persist until you are able to develop a healthy identity and relate appropriately with other men in a nonsexual way. (Moberly)
Self-Worth
Low feelings of self-worth and inferiority are common breeding grounds for same-sex attractions. Traumatic experiences in your life as a child could have lead to feelings of inferiority. Negative interactions with other boys could have easily damaged a vulnerable self-image and increased your sense of feeling different from other children. Feeling different creates a mind set that can have a tremendous impact on your development and on the way you see the world. These feelings may have separated you from your peers and you may have felt you were living your life from the outside looking in. Knowing that your attractions were not normal, you kept them secret and this secret not only increased your sense of aloneness, but made you feel you were of less value than other boys. Unfortunately, the feelings of isolation, inferiority, and fear of exposure are the very forces that keep the underlying issues from being resolved. Other children may have picked up on your sense of inadequacy and attacked it, causing you to withdraw further, defensively detach, and even develop a fantasy life.
You likely felt a sense of shame because your attractions were wrong, and this made you feel even more different and inferior in relation to your friends. The feelings of being different, inferior, and guilty often lead to self-belittling and self-degrading thoughts. You may have thought that you were inherently defective, not knowing that your homosexual attractions were the result of a deficit and not a defect.
Early Sexual Experiences
If you had unresolved needs for affection or experienced social or emotional trauma, you would have been particularly vulnerable to negative experiences. Early masturbation, exposure to pornography, or childhood sexual experimentation often introduce sexual thoughts before young men are able to understand them, and they can reinforce homosexual interests. Children who have been victimized by sexual abuse or youth who have early sexual contacts can become confused and develop a gender misidentity and unusual sexual interests and values. Inappropriate sexual activity blurs the distinction between intimacy and sex. Studies show that boys who are sexually abused are four to seven times more likely to have same-sex attractions and 65% of the victims say the abuse affected their sexual identity. (Bolton, Morris, and MacEachron)
conclusions
Many boys become aware of their same-sex attractions at an early age (sometimes before age five). The most important formative years for the development of sexual feelings and attitudes are during late infancy and before the onset of puberty, and not during puberty and adolescence. Dr. John Money explained, "The hormones of puberty activate what has already formed and is awaiting activation." (Money, 1988, p. 124) Your development of heterosexual interests would have proceeded instinctively if emotional maturity has not been obstructed by issues such as those just discussed. Dr. William Consiglio describes homosexuality as a disorientation from the mainstream of heterosexual development. "It is not something a person is born with; rather, it is sexual disorientation when the God-designed stream of heterosexuality is blocked. Homosexuality is not an alternative sexuality or sexual orientation, but an emotional disorientation caused by arrested or blocked emotional development in the stream of heterosexuality." (Consiglio, p. 22) But the good news is that the condition is correctable. When these blockages are "successfully reduced, diminished, or removed, human sexuality can resume its natural heterosexual flow toward its proper, God-designed outlet; i.e., wholesome, mature, sexual, and emotional expression in marriage with a person of the opposite sex." (Consiglio, p. 22)
Your same-sex urges are not unrealistic or rebellious. It is not a fear of, or a flight from, heterosexuality. It is actually an unconscious attempt to fill your normal emotional needs and when these needs begin to be filled, you can begin again progressing toward full heterosexual maturation. (Moberly, chapter 2)
Read more about other causes of same-sex attraction