Gay man finds freedom from Homosexuality
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaThe Testimony of Ron Brookman delivered at the National Forum on Marriage Parliament House Canberra,I was a homosexual for 30 years. Every fibre of my being was homosexually driven. Over the last 13 years I have reclaimed heterosexuality. I am now happily married to Ruth, and am the father of 5 children
I lead Living Waters, a national Christian organisation which helps people work through issues of broken sexuality, overcoming such issues as homosexuality, sexual addiction, recovery from sexual abuse, and from the wounding that can occur in relationships. As I tell my story I want to highlight truths, not only from my own journey, but also those that I have seen in many peoples’ lives as I have helped them address issues such as homosexuality and sexual addiction.
For those 30 years I yearned for a brother, a man with whom I could share my life, to take away my inner loneliness, give me a sense of completeness, a fuller identity and significance, who I could know intimately, who would be my soul and sexual mate for life.
I had a problem securing such a man because I was a Christian minister. Though parts of my denomination might have looked approvingly upon my yearning, most wouldn’t. And as much as I yearned for male partnership I also had certain reservations. Deep down I knew that it was not the way that my body was made. The difference between male and female anatomy beckons heterosexuality as the one way for human sexuality. The Biblical pattern is clear, it makes no room for anything different. But, for me, there seemed no way, nor did I really desire, to get there. Deep within I faced the feeling that I was born that way, and I didn’t really want to change.
As far back as 5, I can remember being sexually attracted to boys. We occasionally visited a friend’s house where I would be given an evening bath with their boys. There was something about Ray and Kenny’s nakedness that I was really attracted to. Then at 11, I was seduced by an older youth. Though I didn’t realise what he was doing initially, I liked it. His intimate touch was a great contrast to my Dad’s beltings and my Mum’s yelling. For the next 5 years I pursued and remained in sexual contact with him.
It finally ceased because I had moved interstate. I sought to pursue others, but in the early 70′s in the country towns where I trained as a teacher and then taught, there was no avenue, that I could find. I managed my sexuality by withdrawing into lust, fantasy and masturbation. In my frustration I found my fantasy at times leaning towards the 12 year old boys and young teens that I taught. There was something about their innocence, their youthfulness, and their uncomplicated stage of life that I was very attracted to. The hedonism of homosexuality causes many to be drawn to youthfulness. There’s a certain maturity of masculinity that male homosexuality resists. Rather it envies youthful physique and freedom. Ex-homosexuals say that they yearn the innocence of youth. It compensates for their sense of shame and guilt. I could relate. By God’s grace my fantasies did not extend to interfering with kids in any way.
I focussed more on male peers, to whom I would attach co-dependently, but with whom I didn’t find the opportunity to act out. Instead I added homosexual pornography to the ways in which I relieved my loneliness and sexual frustration. Homosexuality tends to follow an addictive pattern. It can never be satisfied, and seeks new, different and exciting ways to find fulfilment, which is actually to cover pain and shame, deep and often unrecognised.
At 26 I commenced studying for the Christian ministry. To befit a leader and to cover my inner dilemma and shame, I figured that it would help if I was married. May be that way I may even undergo whatever was necessary to become heterosexual, though I was quite ambivalent about that. In the previous 10 years I had tried 3 relationships with women. All brief. All failures.
At Theological College I managed to find a woman with whom I had a very broken relationship. It was based on my need to rescue. We married about 3 months after we met. Both broken, we ended up in a real mess. I don’t even know how I fathered 2 children. I hated sex and could barely perform. I valued my masculine friendships so much more, again, driven by fantasy. It seemed that only through male friendships could I find life.
The marriage lasted 6 years. When she left, the addictive nature of my homosexuality took another step. In my shame and loneliness I allowed myself to be seduced again. I merged into the gay scene in Newtown and Darlinghurst, though very much under cover because I was still a minister. I lived in torment for a further 6 years, seeking to deny this powerful drive within me, yet being unable to resist it. I attached emotionally to various men with whom I had sexual relationships. But to maintain my cover I had to deny my long-term desire to settle with a male soul mate, withdrawing when ever the magnetism became too strong.
What would I do?. To come out I would lose face, lose my job, lose respect from my friends and from children. I feared that they would be cast into deep confusion.
My double life continued to reflect my heart’s ambivalence. Finally, after 6 years I received grace, and gathered courage to share my struggle with another pastor. He had some skill in counselling in this area, helped me to curtail my activities, and then find healing. Gradually I stopped my encounters with other men, then I was able to resist porn, and finally cease to dwell in lust and fantasy. It was a battle which I lost many times. I would confess, start again, having to by-pass the strong feelings that I was born this way. Instead, I would embrace that deeper and often hidden conviction, that this was not the way that God made me.
I had to face many issues:
My dad’s violence had made me detach from him, and from the masculinity he represented.
My mum’s nagging and siding with dad caused me to distrust women in my deepest core.
These same feelings and judgements commonly occur in the homosexual condition. Ambivalence is also common. I was ambivalent about masculinity, for example.
The masculinity I rejected with my heart I yearned for in my soul. My yearning for connection to a man’s strong body and soul made up for the way I rejected the masculinity my father represented. Erotic male love compensated for unmet childhood emotional needs.
These emotional needs had become eroticised when I was seduced as a kid. They set my sexuality on a course to desperately try to fulfil them. It was futile because they could not be fulfilled sexually being pre adolescent, pre-sexual emotional needs.
I also experienced ambivalence to women. Again, something so common to homosexuality. Whereas I had rejected women at an emotional level I did need them as good friends. Superficially, we got on like a house on fire. I was safe to them because they knew intuitively that I didn’t want to get into bed with them. And they were safe to me because I was free from any drive to become emotionally or sexually involved with them. Deep resentment of the feminine prevented me from relating transparently with them.
Homosexuality is manhood in confusion.
Detesting masculine strength, I distanced myself from things mechanical, or activities which required me to get grubby or soiled, and from man-talk about sport, cars and how to fix things. I gravitated instead to the more sensitive areas of creativity, cuisine, clothes and culture.
With God’s help, through counsellors and groups, I faced all these issues. I worked through my soul’s deepest reactions to masculinity, and the erotic compensations I made. I faced the pain of how my childhood and adolescent soul was imprinted by broken and hurtful relationships, sexual encounters and my reactive vows and decisions. My adult soul was set hard. Counselling, quite painful at times enabled the imprints to be re-cast.
Why did I push on? When I could have joined forces with the yielding of my denomination to accept homosexuality?
From my experience in the scene, and more lately through what I have seen helping others, I realised that the promiscuity, the instability and hedonism of homosexuality precludes growth to a wholesome masculine maturity. It tended to divide me from my children, rather than unite me to them. I realised that homosexuality was focussed more on the ‘Adonis’ of youthfulness than the wisdom and strength of masculine maturity. Homosexuality could never be satisfied. We were always looking for more.
As I persisted, often through pain, I resolved many of these issues. I found my relationship with both men & women changing. I ceased to assess men sexually. I was no longer in need of them emotionally. In the last decade I have developed many secure, strong, and healthy masc friendships, devoid of sexual overtones.
Surprisingly, as I continued the process I found a strange transition to become attracted to women.
I was able to overturn the judgements I made about women. My heart’s core hardness, which prevented my allowing them to come really close, softened. My deep distrust yielded to an ability to work closely together, where I can be open and transparent with them. I found myself being attracted to women, and one in particular. Ruth.
We had an on again, off again, courtship in which we both worked on issues. Mine were “Can I really surrender myself to Ruth? Can I really love her? Would I really lay myself down for her? Can I actually allow her to know who I really am? Can I trust woman. Can I trust Ruth?
After 3 years we were sufficiently resolved and sure of our love to marry. We have been together now, very happily, and growing closer for 10 years. We have 3 kids, and I know how we had them! I love making babies. I love being so intimately close with my beautiful wife. Marriage to Ruth has gloriously surpassed all the yearnings I had for a male life partner.
To be honest, there have been times when I have withdrawn, not back into homosexual preference, but into my cave of isolation, the old hallmarks of hardness and distrust. Ruth has challenged me, and in God’s grace, and with help I have accessed other hidden past issues and reactions which have triggered my withdrawal.
I remain in accountability for the health of my marriage and for any stray homosexual lustful thoughts that I may have from time to time.
It’s not that I haven’t really been healed. I am! I am a different man. I’m fulfilled, no longer frustrated, yearning, addicted or bound to sexual activities and relationships that were exciting in nature, but shallow in intimacy, and precluding the growth of my masculinity.
But healing is process, and as with us all, emotions can arise in my soul, or stimuli can pass before my eyes which ignite youthful flames. Maturity and wholesome masculinity is knowing how to quickly extinguish them and to embrace the values, passions and rigours which enable us to pursue our true identity and destiny.
Mine is to be a loving husband and a faithful, healthy and present father modelling eternal truth and love to my kids.
It is also to be working with many others, men and women, who have suffered similar profound damage to their sense of gender, who cannot find peace with their homosexual orientation and are looking for answers. Nothing is more rewarding than to see these precious people find freedom too.
