The Velvet Rage (20 page)

Even at times when it seems smart to not be completely honest or forthcoming, integrity necessitates that we act against this urge. Not only does this action build our own sense of self-worth (i.e., “who I am is worth presenting to the world”), it also builds fulfilling and emotionally healthy relationships. For Rico, he had noticed that many of his relationships in town were somewhat superficial and lacked the fundamental “connectedness” that he wanted. Furthermore, he realized that he had acquired the reputation of being a player and a tease, and other gay men seemed to hold him at a distance.

The learning and practice of passion, love, and integrity is what creates meaningful contentment in our lives. Once we have shed the shackles of shame, and seek to create a life worth living, these three become the ultimate goals of our lives.

F
or well over a hundred years, most major schools of thought in psychotherapy were based on one rather questionable assumption:
insight into childhood experiences creates changes in adult behavior.
If you had seen a psychotherapist in the 1940s, you might have entered a wood-paneled office that was lined with books and archetypal artifacts that were thought to have deeper meaning in your unconscious mind. The therapist might have smoked during the session (an odd artifact of the therapeutic culture of the time), and through that smoky haze, the two of you would have strolled down the dark corridors of your childhood experience, looking for unresolved conflicts that could be raised into conscious awareness. The holy grail of each session was to attain “insight,” or an intellectual awareness of deeper-seated emotional conflicts. This basic model of psychotherapy has largely predominated the field until the present day, despite mounting evidence that while attaining insight into one's childhood can be immensely satisfying and comforting, it is not sufficient to bring about a change in behavior. For example, the alcoholic patient
might explore his history of childhood emotional abuse and neglect, and still leave each session drinking heavily, destroying his relationships and career, and ultimately committing a slow suicide. Insight into his past experiences may explain why he has come to use alcohol as his primary coping mechanism, but it does not offer him a way to change. Hence, in the case of the alcoholic, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) emerged, offering direct advice on what behaviors must be learned and practiced if one is to stop a dependency on alcohol and live a fulfilling life. What AA offered were “skills”—simple behaviors that could be practiced repeatedly until they became part of one's natural behavioral repertoire. AA offered no deep insight into childhood experience but rather a clear focus on what the alcoholic can do right now—one day at a time—to change his or her life.

As it turns out, most of the research into psychotherapy establishes that AA got it right. Significant life change is all about learning and practicing skills until those new behaviors become a natural part of your life. There have been several highly effective therapies that developed out of this research, including cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy, just to name a few. All of these therapies share one principle in common:
meaningful life change comes from mindful practice
.

No doubt you have experienced this in other areas of your life. If you want to change your body, you might have hired a trainer and regularly met with him or her at a gym so that you could learn the correct exercises and consistently practice what you have learned to create the body you want. If you have ever learned to play a musical instrument, picked up a foreign language, or learned a new sport, you did it through consistent practice of a skill—not by simply acquiring insight into the activity.
It makes no sense to say, for example, that you don't need to take a spinning class because you already understand what spinning is about. The real change comes from getting on the spinning bicycle and riding it for an entire class.

This chapter is a carefully collected list of skills that have been developed over decades of hard work—most of which were taught to me by my clients who embraced their own struggle for authenticity. In compiling this list, I've selected only those skills that are essential and effective in bringing positive change into our lives as gay men. Think of this as a shortcut through years—really decades—of therapy.

As you read over these skills, you will see the wisdom inherent in them. However, reading is not the point. This chapter is a short list of “must do's”—behaviors, not insights; actions, not ideas—that is, necessary choices that must be made if contentment is to be found. It is daily practice, not contemplation, that creates the life you want.

Of everything contained in this book, this chapter is the most important. Regardless of the stage you are in, the regular and consistent practice of these skills will bring you fully and consistently into stage three authenticity. I often say that the journey from the head to the heart is taken with your feet—meaning that the only way to really integrate insights into your life is by behaving differently. Consistent and continuous practice is the magic that makes the real difference in our lives.

One way in which gay men have found support in living these skills is by meeting once a week in a group to discuss and hold one another accountable for living “skillfully.” This can be a wonderful and life-changing experience, especially when facilitated by a trained therapist who can assist the group in staying on track with the skills, and not getting lost in the “story” we tell
ourselves to justify less than skillful behavior. For more information on forming a
Velvet Rage
group and for helpful tools, visit
www.alandowns.com
.

At the end of this chapter is a summary chart of the skills with a brief description of each skill. Many of the gay men that I work with have found it helpful to make a copy of this chart and keep it handy, so they can review it regularly as a reminder of the man they wish to become and the skills they would like to incorporate more often in their lives.

Every moment of every day, every breath you take presents an opportunity to choose a life of contentment and joy. Here, in the small decisions, is where you make choices that ultimately make a big difference in your life. It's easy to imagine that the big decisions, things like changing a job or ending a relationship, make the biggest difference in my life, but this is not so. Most often when I make big changes, I quickly discover that I re-create the same mess I was trying to escape before I made the change. Big moves create upheaval and a distraction from whatever may be causing me distress, but inevitably the same old stuff comes back around with a different costume.

John was determined that Los Angeles was the worst possible place to be middle-aged and single. “All the WeHo guys are tens who are looking for elevens!” he exclaimed to me during one session, referring to the ten-point rating system used on popular reality contests. John had a fairly successful career as a marketing executive for a company that owned parking lots. While not a terribly sexy industry, the company had done extraordinarily well
throughout John's career, and he had benefited such that he was able to retire in his late forties with a decent retirement stashed away if he was careful with his spending. John had been in a long-term relationship with another man that had lasted a decade and a half, and he had been single, quite unhappily, for the past four years. His therapy was often a recounting of the various dates and online dating encounters he would have with other gay men. With his fiftieth year just around the corner, John decided that he needed to make a big change—that would be the only way he would find a partner. He sold his home in Los Angeles, said good-bye to lifelong close friends, and moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he had grown up. Thinking a simpler life in a small town would facilitate meeting a man who was more down-to-earth than the West Hollywood crowd he had tried unsuccessfully to date, he created a life in Savannah in hopes of a fresh new start.

That was the last I heard from John until, quite to my surprise, I ran into him on the street during a visit to Key West some two years later. Still single, bored with life in a small town, and full of the same complaints about gay men (only now it was those “Southern queens”), he was already planning to move to Atlanta, where he imagined the selection of single gay men was more plentiful. “After all, it's a numbers game.”

John had enacted the classic “geographic”—moving to another geographic location thinking that will change his life for the better. Unfortunately for John, he was unwilling to see that his problems in dating stemmed more from his inability to be vulnerable with almost anyone, other than his therapist—and only then after much encouragement and support. He had previously been in a relationship that had been somewhat emotionally cold—almost businesslike—and that reinforced in him a tendency to hide his deepest feelings and insecurities from others.

We all know intellectually that changing our circumstances doesn't change us on the inside, and yet we often cling to the fantasy that the big change—a new job, making a lot of money, a new boyfriend, or a new city—will be just the ticket. It rarely is.

Every day, every decision we make presents us with the opportunity to choose differently. It is here, in the daily practice of choosing contentment over others' approval, valuing inner peace above all, and living by our values instead of our feelings, that we change for the better.

Skill
: When faced with an important life decision, ask yourself: “What would the man I wish to become do in this situation?” Take a moment and listen carefully to what your heart tells you, and after careful consideration, act on it.

Background
: The secret to creating a content and fulfilled life is by living according to your most treasured values. Often our values are closely held—so closely that it can be sometimes difficult to know them directly. By picturing the man you want to become—your ideal “you”—you can access those most treasured values as manifested in this image.

What gets in the way of using this skill is not in knowing what the man we would like to become would do; rather, it is in the willingness to act on what we know. Most often caught up in the emotion of the moment or wanting a quick escape from our current pain, we choose not to act on what we know is in our highest and best interest.

None us gets it right all the time, and each of us in our own way becomes willfully determined to act against what we know is in our best interest. We aspire to always be willing, but in those moments
when that's not possible, we do ourselves a service by at least being mindful that we have consciously made a choice that isn't consistent with our own values. Judgment, shame, and self-deprecation rarely help in these moments. Just by noticing your own willfulness, you'll begin to change in a positive direction.

Skill
: When trying to decide between two or more options in life, honestly assess which option is most likely to contribute to your own inner peace. Choose the option that holds the greatest promise of bringing you peace in the long term.

Background
: When the noise of conflicting feelings, life pressures, and such reaches a crescendo in our minds, it is easy to lose our perspective on what is important. We can convince ourselves that choices that promise success, money, love, and popularity are in our best interest, but is that same choice likely to increase our experience of inner peace? At the end of it all, what matters most is being at peace with ourselves, and nothing more. Not accomplishments, possessions, relationships, money, or fame. So, no matter what you think you might gain from a particular decision, if it doesn't ultimately contribute to your attainment of inner peace, it isn't worth it.

Nowhere is this skill more valuable than in your choice of life partners. We've been taught to choose the partner that ignites our fire and makes us feel the heat of love and attraction—sometimes at the expense of many other key relationship elements; if that relationship doesn't contribute to your own sense of peace and contentment, the cost is just too high.

My client Alex is a great example here. Alex called my assistant and asked to see me at the first available opening. My assistant,
who is very adept at sensing serious distress, asked Alex if he was suicidal, and he replied that he was seriously thinking about killing himself but wouldn't likely act on it. During our first session, the story flowed out of Alex like a rushing river. He had led a quiet life as a junior high school history teacher until he met Craig. Craig was an incredibly hot-looking man who was completely taken with Alex. During the first year of their relationship things went mostly smoothly, but Craig seemed to grow increasingly unsatisfied in the relationship even though his words were that he was happy with Alex. When Craig and Alex went out on the weekends, Craig began expressing an interest in picking up other men for the two of them to have sex with. Alex, not really interested in the idea of three-ways, went along, hoping it would make Craig happy. As time went on, Craig began to occasionally use crystal meth on weekends and would cruise the local park to find men to bring home for Alex and Craig to have sex with. Eventually, Craig began spending most of his free time online searching for men, and one night when they were out at a bar, Craig overdosed on GHB and had to be rushed to the emergency room. By the time Alex and Craig hit the three-year mark, word had spread around town about the couple, and even fellow teachers at Alex's school had heard some of the stories. Two weeks prior to Alex coming in to see me, Craig was arrested for having sexual relations with a minor. Because he had done this while living in Alex's home, Alex had been placed on leave from his teaching job until there could be a complete investigation. Now Alex faced losing his employment, possibly ending his career, and dealing with a boyfriend who clearly had a serious drug-infused sex addiction.