The Velvet Rage (17 page)

Relationship hopelessness is truly widespread among gay men. There are even some gay men, such as those involved in Queer Nation or the Radical Faeries, who suggest that gay men are not meant to be in committed relationships. Among other things, they point to other animal species where the males never remain with the same female, and suggest that men are just genetically programmed to be “poly-amorous.”

When I encounter such relationship hopelessness in a gay male client, we can almost always work together to discover at least one and often multiple betrayals in his relationships with male lovers. It most cases, the betrayals are quite clear and vivid in the client's memory.

The work of healing betrayal is at the same time simple and complex. The simplicity of the work to be done is that it revolves around one principle: acceptance. The complexity lies in the innate difficulty that all human beings have in accepting those things that do not fit into our expectations of the world around us.

The acceptance of betrayal is about accepting the following:

1. All men, and gay men in particular, have shortcomings.

2. Betrayal is a product of the betrayer's woundedness and not the fault of the betrayed.

The underlying dynamic of this acceptance is the realization that betrayal has a predictable and knowable cause: emotional woundedness. If we wish to have a relationship that is free of betrayal, then we must either find a partner who is not wounded or find a partner who is willingly and actively working on his own emotional wounds. Of course, the former is difficult if not impossible to find. The latter becomes the requirement of all gay men who wish to heal their relationship trauma.

When we accept that the betrayal we have experienced results from another person's wounds, we free ourselves from the otherwise automatic back draft of self-doubt and invalidation. It is not we who have created the betrayal, but rather it was something that was done to us, quite independent of our own actions.

The question shifts from “What did I do to deserve this?” to “How can I prevent this from happening again?” Acceptance allows us to move on to prevention and regain a sense of control over our lives. Of course, we can never prevent betrayal completely, but we can make great strides in decreasing its likelihood without sacrificing our hope in relationships.

It is a fundamental dialectical dilemma: We are not responsible for the betrayal we experience, and at the same time, we can work toward preventing it. On the surface, the two seem to cancel each other out. If you look a bit closer, however, you'll find that there is synthesis of these two seemingly opposing truths, and in that synthesis lies healing.

The acceptance of betrayal is two-sided. Not only do we accept that the betrayal is the result of another man's woundedness, but
there is also the implied acceptance that if another man is not so wounded, he is less likely to betray us. If emotional wounds can cause betrayal, then the absence of these same wounds is likely to prevent betrayal.

Until now, we have spoken of the betrayed and the betrayer as two separate individuals. However, in real life they are often the same person. The man who betrays in one circumstance is also the betrayed in another circumstance. Truth is, a gay man has likely been both betrayer and the betrayed in his relationships. He has both given and received of this vitriolic cocktail.

Given this, the work of acceptance takes on a life-size proportion. We accept not only that the betrayal we experienced resulted from another's wounds
but that the betrayal we perpetrated was the result of our own wounds.

As you might expect, relationship hopelessness comes not only from having been betrayed but also from knowing that within you lies the capability of betraying. How can you trust another man not to betray you when you have been willing to betray? When we overcome the shame of stage three and begin to carefully examine the parts of ourselves that were previously hidden by shame, we see that we are capable of inflicting great pain upon our lovers. We have been both perpetrator and victim of emotional violence within our relationships.

How can a gay man trust that he is no longer willing to commit betrayal in his relationships? How can he trust himself not to destroy those he loves? The answer comes from the resolution of toxic shame that occurred in stage three. When he is no longer driven by the avoidance of shame, he no longer employs the tactics of shame avoidance.

This translates into a gay man who no longer needs to run into the arms of another man to soothe a deep sense of shame. He no
longer must prove his worth and sexual validity by seeking out sexual gratification with partners outside the boundaries of his relationship. While the interest in sexual exploits remains, his desire and willingness to act upon this urge diminishes dramatically. In other words, he may get excited at the prospect of new sexual partners, but he is not blinded by a craving for sexual validation as he may have been previously. Perhaps it might be a good time, but now there are other considerations that are more important to him.

Eventually, the gay man begins to trust himself again. He can have a relationship and not automatically destroy it. He can choose a partner who cherishes him and will not destroy him in return.

Much has been written about domestic abuse in heterosexual relationships, and virtually all of it applies to gay men. We are no strangers to our share of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. The gay man's experience of abuse is heightened by the fact that we are men, and men should be able to protect themselves from harm. All too often, the gay man is embarrassed to report physical abuse.

Sexual abuse is also all too common. A sizable minority of gay men were sexually abused as children, and an even larger number report at least one rape-like experience in their past.

Gay men tend to resist labeling forced sexual behavior as abuse. They may hold themselves responsible for having picked up the hitchhiker or the handsome boy at the gym. Who do they have but themselves to blame for what happens after that?

Many gay men have a difficult time identifying their own childhood sexual experiences as sexual abuse. I often hear, “I wanted it.” Or “I just remember being scared and turned on.”

Regardless of how it is rationalized, all of these experiences are sexual abuse, and while not every instance of abuse creates symptoms of trauma, many do. Because the symptoms of trauma are often felt long after the traumatic event, it is common for the victim of sexual abuse not to make the connection between the injury and the symptom. With some work and the guidance of a psychotherapist, the gay man can often identify these connections and come to an awareness of how his life has been adversely affected by sexual abuse.

One symptom that is sometimes seen among survivors of childhood sexual abuse is the tendency in later life to use sex as a way of attracting other people or getting what you want. Surveys of adolescent hustlers bear out the facts: most adolescents and young men who are in the sex trade were sexually abused at a younger age. Sex is learned as a way of controlling other people or as a way of attracting people who will care for you.

One night sitting around a lovely pool in Fort Lauderdale, a friendly and apparently successful gay man—I'll call him John—told the story of his paper routes as a young boy. He was now a handsome man and looked as if he had been a very attractive boy when he was younger. He recalled how he would make his rounds of delivering the paper every day, and once a month he would stop by each house to collect the bill. At one house, a man answered the door (the father of a neighborhood friend) and invited him in. Once in the house, the man removed his shorts and began fondling himself. John remembers finding this very exciting and equally terrifying. The man then took my friend into his bedroom and sodomized him.

John told the story of running home, taking a shower, and of being scared to death that anyone would find out what had happened. When John approached the man's house the next month, the same thing happened. In the years that followed, my friend recalled the story of how he started wearing tight cutoff shorts when he went bill collecting and how he would make a sport of how many men he could seduce. Over a few years, he recalls having regular sexual encounters with a dozen men on his paper route.

When the time came for college, John had decided that he wanted to go to medical school. He was certainly smart enough, but his family didn't have the money for all those years of schooling, so he covered his extra expenses by having sex for money. By the time he was accepted into medical school, he had a regular clientele of men who paid him well for the time he spent with them.

I was amazed, as you might be, to hear this story of a boy who hustled his way through medical school. I was even more amazed that John recounted the story with virtually no acknowledgement that it was unusual, much less abusive. He laughed as he recounted
such things as the number of his friends' fathers that he slept with during those years. Everyone else laughed with him.

It's impossible to say conclusively that the two are related, but I can't help but notice that John has never really been able to maintain a committed, long-term relationship as an adult. His current relationship has existed for three years—the longest one to date—but, by his own admission, only because he and his lover have sex with other men. There are times when either one of them will go out for the evening and not return home until the next day, having spent the night with another man he found attractive.

The effects of childhood sexual abuse can have more severe consequences for a gay man. A sizeable number of all people who are sexually abused in childhood have extreme difficulty regulating their emotions as adults. Such adult diagnoses as Borderline Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder are known to have strong links to childhood sexual abuse. Other problems like substance abuse, suicidal behavior, deliberate self-harm, and even antisocial (criminal) behavior have also been linked to childhood sexual abuse.

The effects of sexual activity, regardless of the child's desire or participation, are significant and damaging. A child is quite capable of strong sexual feelings but at the same time is not capable of handling the emotional aftermath of such feelings. The introduction of sexual activity too early in a child's or adolescent's life interferes with his ability to develop adequate and appropriate coping mechanisms. What may have seemed like a harmless and even highly erotic act is often devastating psychologically.

There is also an interesting phenomenon that exists among some survivors of violent childhood sexual abuse. As adults, they
prefer
violent sexual acts, and may even be unable to achieve an
erection unless there is a feeling of violence or force during sex. They seek out others to bind, whip, chain, and otherwise brutalize themselves. For these men, the pleasure of sex has been almost inextricably linked with violence. They have highly eroticized memories of sexual violence and often fantasize about “rough sex.”

Sexual abuse experienced as an adult is often not nearly as damaging as it is to the child, but it, too, has lasting effects. More than a few gay men have reported that they are exclusively a “top” because of a violent or forceful rape in the past.

The gay male perpetrator of sexual abuse is almost always seeking control or reenacting childhood sexual experiences. He may feel helpless and out of control in life or in his relationship. Or he may have eroticized violence and mistakenly assumed that others secretly fantasize about sexual violence, too.

Abandonment is not unique to gay men, nor are any other forms of relationship trauma. Still, I am always taken aback by the stories of gay men who have been suddenly and utterly abandoned by their partners. It's the old melodrama of the husband who goes to work and runs off with his secretary, never returning home. The wife finds out from a letter, a phone call, or the nosy neighbor who's just heard the latest gossip.

Abandonment is so deeply wounding because it allows no room for closure and leaves myriad unanswered questions. What went wrong? Why didn't you say something earlier? How did I not see it coming? What did I do to drive you away?

The gay man who suddenly abandons his partner almost always does so because of a secondary emotion of shame. When he
feels angry in the relationship, it immediately goes into shame for feeling angry. When he senses the relationship failing, he is subsequently overcome with shame at the failure. He cannot talk with his partner about the problems because he feels so much shame about his role in creating the problems. No matter what is happening in the relationship, his final response is shame.

Obviously, this becomes unbearable. He cannot see a way out of the misery until another opportunity comes into his life. He suddenly takes a job in another city, moves in with a new boyfriend, or moves out of the house when his partner is out of town. Because he cannot face the overwhelming shame of admitting the problems and working through them, he runs away. Whether it is into the arms of another man or to a new town, he finds a convenient excuse to escape the tyranny of his own toxic shame.