Many men feel same-sex attractions and wonder about their opposite-sex capabilities. In this series, we will look deeply into those feelings, riding from stage coach stop to stage coach stop.

Someone wrote to me:

“When I notice a guy, it’s hard not to start fantasizing—especially in the summer.”

The way to understand and deal with homosexual feelings is not by trying to avoid those feelings, but by understanding them just as they come into mind.

After you digest the narrative in this series and have given that some thought, and after some therapeutic exercises we will suggest, you might understand in more detail what messages your sub-conscience is beaming out.

Your body is sending you messages, albeit encoded messages, but which nonetheless are vital to you as a sexual being.

Everyone has the potential to experience homosexual feelings, and everyone has an equal potential to feel attracted to the opposite sex and engage in sex with them. The famous Australian Identical Twin Studies carried out in the year 2000 have proved beyond all reasonable doubt, that with your genes, hormones, and maternal womb influences, you can identify as what they call ‘homosexual’ but just as well as what is labeled ‘heterosexual’.

In this huge study where 33.000 identical twins were recruited at random to be interviewed for a great number of questions, it turned out that in those twins where homosexuality was identifiable, in 90% of the cases, the other identical twin identified as heterosexual. This was later confirmed in other unbiased big studies elsewhere too.

The expectation beforehand was that almost always both twins identify in the same way. Homosexuality was “nature”, so was the rule. But with these results in the “nature versus nurture” debate, homosexual feelings clearly can only be nurture. This is because no sound medical train of thought can explain these results other than the psychological approach, which means nurture, the process of growing up.

The findings were groundbreaking and, to this day, those members of the emancipation movement who have radicalized, find it hard to come to terms with it. It defies everything that activists had promoted as being true since 1990: the ‘born-that-way’ ideology.

And many battle-hardened activists shiver at the thought of their 20th-century mantras not being true anymore. Like doubting Thomases, they charge on ahead with even more fanaticism to combat the idea that psychological processes influence such core aspects of adult life.

In his book “My Genes Made Me Do It”, Dr. Neil Whitehead, who does research for the United Nations explains the whole Identical Twins Studies in great detail. It means you can certainly have homosexual feelings, but with the very same genes and all biological factors that you possess, you can also be deeply attracted and committed to the opposite sex.

There are far too few books that actually describe homosexual feelings themselves, other than pornography. But pornography is part of a fantasy world aimed at exploiting sexual arousal, not achieving mutual understanding. It is a commercial product.

The efforts of narrow-minded activists are all about legal issues and rights, meaning ‘I am right and you are wrong’. But content is never discussed by them. In fact, they have managed to conceal the content of homosexual desires itself from sight, fearing disapproval and discrimination. A taboo has been created around homosexuality and all honest discussion is stigmatized as harmful.

When you find yourself struggling with homosexual feelings, with religious values, with your marriage, with personal values, or with the need to remain connected to fellow mankind, a strange feeling sets in. You begin to feel alone in the world. It is as if your predicament is not described anywhere.

Here at exgaycalling.com, we present a narrative along the lines of recent science. When you look into the homosexual feelings themselves, what do you experience? Let us try to describe:

In the street, wow, you see this guy. He walks around self-assured, feeling good about himself (how the hell does he do it?). He is great and he is showing his greatness (who taught him that?). He is King of his world and he is in charge (how will I ever reach that status, how can I attract his attention, why am I not like him?)

I want, I need to be his friend. I need to be in his inner circle, I need to walk around like a king too.

But I am puny, make that fat, make that too small, make that too big, make that too nerd, make that too involved, make that too dopey, make that too bright, make that too clumsy, make that too clever, make that too self-conscious, make that too unaware of my environment, make that too isolated, make that too lonely. Make that: I feel horrible.

Oh my god, I am so aware of it. Why am I who I am? Why am I not just someone else? Like him?

I love myself, I hate myself. I admire my body, I hate my body. I need friends but I am useless as a friend. I want to be king but who would want to befriend a freak like me?

Mr. Him. How does he do it? How does he just walk around and radiate his maleness like a lighthouse and be the most perfect creature a man would want to be?
Why don’t I feel that way? What is wrong with me?

Let me just try to evade that guy. Let me just try not to look at him. Let me just try not to feel. Let me just try not to be who I am at this moment in time. Let me just try to be perfect.

But when I open my eyes, there he is again: that look, that confidence, that fun in being yourself without a worry in the world.

Welcome to Self-Talk. Not all of what I just wrote may be appropriate for you, but every guy struggling with unwanted Same-Sex Attractions (SSA’s) shares many of these things. They are a hieroglyph from the past. A powerful one, a pervasive one, and a hieroglyph not to be denied.

The more you deny these signs, the more they come back to haunt you. In old Egypt, hieroglyphs were placed in pyramids and when the tomb raiders came, they were haunted by these strange signs. And so will you when you ignore their encoded message.

The more you repress your SSA’s, the more they will come back. They represent suppressed conflicts of your youth which keep nagging until they are resolved. Those hieroglyphics are you. What are the hieroglyphics saying?

The fundaments of these feelings were formed when you were too young to understand.

In this series, we will analyze the way that feelings came into being and the way that they affect you in the present. As Joseph Nicolosi Sr. pointed out in his book “Reparative Therapy”, there is a multitude of extremely exciting topics to consider.

We will look, for example, into the importance of the father-son relationship and show how this has contributed to the development of gender identity. Being able to identify with a healthy father figure leads to a strong identification with the own maleness and maleness in general.

We will study the father’s influence on the poor separation from the mother figure. A quality of anger toward him emerges and males become a mystery in the childhood development. This leads to problems emerging in childhood as the boy grows into a chronic state of defensive detachment. Ultimately, a problem with assertion arises, leading to a sense of timidity and shyness.

All these confusing feelings lead to jealousy of other boys who appear to have it all without a worry in the world. In this series, we will slowly unravel each and every aspect of this childhood psychosexual development.

To be continued.

Job Berendsen, MD.