The Velvet Rage (18 page)

The aftereffects of abandonment are devastating for the abandoned. In the vacuum created by unanswered questions and unresolved feelings, he almost always turns inward and blames himself for the abandonment. Even the most confident gay men find themselves undermined and confused.

A unique form of abandonment occurs when a gay man abandons his partner emotionally. He withdraws into himself and begins to live a private life, one that is separate from his relationship. He suppresses, masks, and blunts his emotions when
around his partner, presenting a skewed version of himself to his partner.

It's not unusual for the gay man who emotionally withdraws to privately complain that his partner doesn't understand him, and, therefore, wonder what's the point of revealing his true thoughts and feelings to him. And while this may be true, now that he is withdrawn, what choice does the partner have but to not understand him?

Emotional withdrawal is often triggered by perceived invalidation within a relationship. Perceived invalidation can come in many forms, but the end result is the feeling that your partner doesn't understand or isn't willing to see your side of the story. It can be as simple as the gay man who makes pasta every week, oblivious to the fact that his partner doesn't like pasta and who sees this as an invalidating act. Or as big as the gay man who tells his partner what an idiot he's been for having been in an automobile accident. Regardless of the cause, perceived invalidation on a regular basis elicits emotional withdrawal. Eventually, the invalidated gay man shuts down completely.

Emotional abandonment is a two-edged sword. Not only is it traumatic for the person who is abandoned, but it often comes out of distress experienced by the one who abandons. The abandoned man feels lonely, isolated, and rejected. Ironically, the man who abandons usually feels the same.

Emotional abandonment is often the precursor to sexual and physical abandonment. First, the gay man stops sharing his most cherished feelings with his partner. Then, slowly, he loses interest in sex. If the cycle isn't broken, he eventually is likely to abandon the partner altogether, leaving both feeling as if they never really knew each other at all.

A more subtle kind of relationship trauma is created by being in a relationship with a man who at times is warm and caring, but once he senses that his partner is drawing closer to him emotionally, he backs off and becomes emotionally distant and removed. Don't be fooled by the lack of drama inherent in this kind of trauma—in the long run, it can be just as wounding as the other forms of relationship trauma.

The ambivalent relationship between gay men is a relationship where one partner woos and seduces the other partner by showing his tender and vulnerable side. Once the other is drawn into his shower of affection and attention, he backs away and becomes distant, and perhaps even critical of the other. Once he senses that he may lose the other man, he again shows such enticing attributes as compassion, humility, or sexual interest. Once the other is secured back into the relationship, he withdraws again. This on-again, off-again approach-avoidant behavior continues, often for years, confusing and disorienting the emotions of the recipient of this treatment.

The traumatic wounding that this created in the ambivalent relationship is a slow but steady process that causes the recipient to question his ability to function in the relationship. At its worst, it is truly crazy-making, causing him to question his own hold on reality.

The primary source of emotional validation is usually a man's significant other. When he is angry about anything in life, he expresses his frustration and anger to his partner and looks for validation of his feelings. The partner may agree that this situation is indeed frustrating and his anger is justified. Or the partner
may disagree and invalidate the emotion of anger. In a close intimate relationship between gay men, they often look to each other for validation of their most significant emotions.

In the ambivalent relationship, the gay man's emotions are sometimes validated and sometimes not. This can create growing confusion and cause him to question his own thoughts and feelings. It puts him off-balance, and he is never quite certain why some emotions are validated only at certain times. One day he is the apple of his lover's eye; the next, his lover acts as if he were not even around. It is disarming, and it causes even the most secure gay man to question his ability to understand and navigate relationships.

Dan came to me for psychotherapy several years ago. He had been in a relationship with a man for more than ten years. What Dan described in our first sessions was clearly an ambivalent relationship. Dan's lover, Mark, traveled frequently for business. At times, he would be on the road for weeks. During some trips, Mark would call every night to talk with Dan. During other trips, Dan would receive only one quick phone call or possibly not hear from Mark. Sometimes when Mark would return from a trip, he seemed eager to reconnect with Dan. Other times, it was as if he looked right through him.

Dan also described times when the two of them would go out to parties. Mark could be very attentive to Dan prior to going out, but when they arrived at the party, Mark was off on his own. Dan even noticed that his conversation changed. Instead of saying things like, “We just bought a house,” he would say, “I just bought a house.”

At first, Dan imagined that maybe Mark was having an affair. After all, he was out of town a great deal—the perfect setup for having affairs with other men. When he confronted Mark with
his suspicions, Mark denied having ever been unfaithful. Yet there was something unsettling about it all.

In time, Dan began pulling away from Mark. He slowly began developing friends and a life of his own that was independent of the relationship. As Mark sensed Dan's pulling away, he became increasingly more attentive and caring. In fact, he went from wanting to have sex once every couple of weeks to almost every night.

This was all deeply confusing to Dan. Was he misreading Mark? Was he the one who had a problem? It seemed every time this had happened before, Dan would respond positively to Mark. It would last a week or two before Mark was back to his old ways. Whenever they talked about it, Mark insisted that Dan was just “too sensitive” and needed counseling. In part, that's why Dan came to see me.

The irony of the situation was that it wasn't Dan who needed the most help. However, Dan was so shaken after living with this behavior for years that he had actually come to believe that he was the one with the problem. When he entered my office, his whole presentation said, “Fix me, I'm broken.”

The trauma of the ambivalent relationship most often has the effect of creating “relationship helplessness.” Relationship helplessness occurs when you believe that no matter what you do and say in a relationship, it won't make a difference. While at first glance it may seem that relationship helplessness is a reaction to a bad relationship, it is much more. In fact, once it starts, it often follows a man through subsequent relationships. It
creates a belief that one is helpless to change or positively influence relationships.

Many men who experience relationship helplessness find themselves staying in a bad relationship because they believe that it would be the same in any other relationship. They often give up and settle for something less than satisfying.

Tim and Walter have been together for more than twenty-five years. They met in their mid-twenties and have lived together ever since. Somewhere around ten years into the relationship, Tim grew weary of Walter's ever changing moods and attitudes toward him. One month he was wonderfully pleasant, and another month he seemed to be bored into apathy. Years of riding this relationship roller coaster had worn down Tim's confidence that a relationship could be anything more than this.

Now, fifteen years later, they still sleep in the same bed, but never, ever touch. Tim once remarked that if his foot accidentally touched Walter in the night that both of them would jerk instantly. On the surface they were mildly friendly with each other, but anyone who spent time with them usually saw beneath the surface smiles and felt the palpable tension between them. When I asked Tim why he stays with Walter, he said, “Look around, all relationships end up this way. I'm just glad that we're still together.”

Tim had been raised by a single mother who moved around a great deal and had had several different boyfriends when Tim was young. He always yearned for a stable life like his friends had. Every year or so, he had to pick up, move with his mother to another town, and change schools. And that meant leaving one set of friends and being forced to make a whole new set of friends. He had learned his relationship helplessness long before he met
Walter. Walter, it seems, only reinforced what Tim had learned as a child: “I am helpless within relationships.”

One gay man said to me, “It would have been easier if he had hit me. At least then there would have been bruises as evidence of the injury. Instead, it was a slow drain on me that eventually destroyed my self-confidence.” Ambivalent relationships are as damaging as virtually any form of physical or emotional abuse, sometimes even more so, because on the surface the relationship may seem safe but in reality is anything but. The backs and forths and ups and downs of these relationships slowly tax the gay man's emotional resources.

H
aving broken free from the stronghold of shame and the pain of trauma, the gay man begins to build his life—a life of meaning, purpose, and satisfaction. It is the time in life, whether he is twenty-two or seventy-five, that he is truly free to become a unique individual who is able to become his own man, and in the process, find real contentment.

What is it that makes a gay man content? The same things that it takes for anyone else to be content, the only difference being that the gay man isn't free to pursue these things until he reaches stage three. Only then can he clearly and without the distracting influence of shame find contentment.

The three legs that make up the stool of contentment are passion, love, and integrity. Contentment in life rests firmly in the ongoing pursuits of these three things.

Passion is a complex and multifaceted code that is implanted into each of us. Breaking that code for all but a few of us becomes a lifelong endeavor. During our early years, it can seem elusive and obscure—so much so that we abandon the pursuit and rest in a complacent and cynical belief that passion simply does not exist for us.

Yet I'm certain that passion exists within each of us. The tragedy of growing up in toxic shame is that we are ill-equipped at best to decipher the code of passion, and the only way we can experience passion is to become a master of the code. To be certain, the discovery of real passion for many gay men is difficult, yet this challenge is not proof of its nonexistence but rather represents the price to be paid for real contentment.

The code of passion is written in the brief but rewarding experiences of joy each of us experiences every day. When we don't know ourselves well or aren't practicing noticing our feelings, the code of passion is hidden from us. Hence, real passion becomes available to the gay man only when he has conquered the toxic shame of his early years. Until then, he may have glimpses and tastes of passion, but the full experience eludes him.

Passion is the repeated experience of joy in doing something
. When one discovers passion, it is usually because an activity seems to produce joy each time it is performed. Normally, there is a diminishing return on the joy associated with an activity. Not so when passion is present. The activity produces a surprising and satisfying amount of joy, again and again.

Passion is a meta-emotion—an emotion that is felt only after observing other emotions over time. Passion is present when you observe that the same activity consistently brings you joy.

Since the key to passion is hidden in joy, it's necessary to understand something about the primary emotion of joy. Like all other primary emotions, joy is a behavior within the body. Most commonly, it is described as the feeling of painless lightness within the body.

Joy is fundamentally different than most emotions. Other emotions like shame or sadness, once triggered, can last for twenty minutes or longer. Often these emotions last much longer because we engage in behaviors that cause the chemicals within our bodies that create these emotions to continually be released. For example, when you first feel sad, you have a tendency to think sad thoughts and remember other sad events in your life. This, in turn, causes your sadness to continue. If you continue to dwell on sad memories and thoughts, your overall mood becomes one that is dominated by sadness.

Joy, on the other hand, tends to be a quick and fleeting emotion that can fly past us and go unnoticed. Once it fires within our brains, it may be felt for as little as a few seconds. For instance, the joy at seeing the face of an old friend whom you haven't seen for years; or the joy at hearing that you just received a long-awaited promotion at work—like other emotions, you can cause joy by thinking about or telling the joyous event to other people. All in all, joy tends to be a quick spike in our emotional field, much like an orgasm of the soul. It builds to a quick climax, then just as quickly fades away.