“I’m not going to make it. I don’t know what else to do. This is impossible. I just long for a long hug. Someone to spend time with. Someone to live life with. What am I supposed to do? All my friends can get a girlfriend, get married, have a family, have sex, and I’m just trying to get rid of my same-sex attraction. I should just get a boyfriend even if that means I’m sinning. That’s all I can do. I give up. God can get rid of me.”
“It seems like your friends are moving on in life. Finding love, finding a family, meanwhile, you are fighting for your soul and you’re doing it alone. “
“Yes! Exactly! I can’t win. It’s like I was born to be in hell. I wish I was a girl because then my guy friends would like me more. I can offer them something. I can offer them sex and everything would be the way God wants it. Then they would want to spend time with me.”
For years this was my attitude and my convos with my therapist. From 20 to 23 I felt doomed. I questioned my existence if couldn’t make God happy. What’s the point of living? There is no way a dedicated Christian who deals with same-sex lust is going to make it. I should just go live a gay lifestyle. I couldn’t get rid of this want in me to have sex with my close guy friends and what was even more painful was that they didn’t want to have sex with me, they wanted to have sex with these girls. All this love and being one was only reserved for marriage. My therapy sessions were filled with this painful, agonizing experience that I didn’t matter. The church has no room for me.
I will always be the second choice.
Then after kids, the third choice.
I saw a life of adventure with my friends, living in apartments together with my friends, having fun vacations, and just having a blast with these guy friends I had ALL fading away as everyone wanted to have sex and get married.
Where was I going to fit in? Was there any room for me in this straight Christian life?
I started losing friends one after the other as I fought for value with hate and anger as my last resort to not drown in pain and go to hell. But I lost it. I became a tornado that destroyed anyone in my path for value.
I hated the Church. I hated marriage. I hated my married friends.
Fuck it all!
And I hated God and wanted to fight him. I wanted to give up, but I felt like I was trapped. God trapped me. I valued truth too much in my life to be okay with changing my theology to gay-affirming.
And most importantly, I valued Friendship too much. I knew I tapped into something that even my friends needed,
friendship.
One year I got a valet job and my whole life changed. I read about 30 books that year, mostly all of C.S. Lewis’ classics, Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul, and books about friendship.
My life and theology were getting reset.
I was reminded forgiveness and asking for forgiveness was so healing to any human that has gone through an extreme amount of pain, hurt, betrayal, and abandonment.
I learned the death of Christ satisfied all Justice I wanted in my life and Jesus died for those that sinned against me. I had to deal with the belief Jesus’ death was more than enough for the justice I wanted.
Then I was reminded, thank God for Catholic theology and how they value the Church, that I mattered!
I was valuable.
I started to understand the context I was in. I was in a world with a bunch of young horny Christians that were trying to not have sex before marriage (God bless their heart for trying) but ended up idolizing dating and marriage. They were also taught to value marriage over friendship by pastors, professors, pop culture Christianity because this was during the time of Prop 8 when all Christians talked about was defending marriage as if it was the end of the world because the gays wanted marriage too. So it indirectly created an environment where shallow marriage theology was abundant and to some extent, the church is suffering now because of that with its widespread divorces.
My therapist was trying to explain to me I had tapped into something that was far beyond what my friends at that time can handle.
That Friendship offers the very intimacy that we Christians long for.
He also challenged me and I can still hear him say it,
“Richard, can you offer compassion to your friends?”
Damn, I didn’t want to. But I knew this was the way of truth and friendship.
I had already come to terms I coudln’t have the type of romantic love life I wanted. And so I had to start embracing the painful loss of a life I wanted as I learned what it meant to follow Christ.
During that year of reading books and understanding Christian truths I really didn’t comprehend in my teens, I was reminded of some very basic principles.
God really does love me, he likes me, he wants to be with me.
He provided the Church to be His hands and feet in my life.
I needed to fight for truth, even if that meant losing friends.
Friendship Matters just as much as marriage.
I can make it as a Christian that deals with same-sex lust. There is hope for me and there is love for me. I fit in the Church. There is intimacy and belonging for me and my body. And it was going to be all done in Friendship.
I started processing how deep friendship can go with my friends. Some accepted some rejected, some loved it and wanted it for themselves.
I realized I was allowed to have that long hug I longed for. Besides, as I started hanging out with more sporty type guys, I saw how physically affectionate they were allowed to be to each other. Guys needed touch from each other. I needed touch from my guy friends and my guy friends needed touch from me.
I learned I was allowed to ask my guy friends that I needed time from them. As I support them in marriage and other life endeavors, they also need to be there for me. Friendship with healthy boundaries is a give and take and the Church needs to understand that. Time does not only go to marriage, it goes to the others outside of marriage. We can’t love those who don’t know the gospel if we don’t give them the time to experience the gospel flowing from our lives, and yes marriage is a tool for that, but so is friendship. Marriage is not the owner of time.
I then learned Transparency emotionally, spiritually, and physically is very important in a friendship. The body is also important in Friendship. Learning how to talk about our physical issues like we do spiritually and emotionally. My friends, surprisingly, always included me in the locker room with them and even communal showers. They didn’t fear me as they included me in the random skinny dipping, changing rooms, and random funny nude experiences that would occur. I was one of the guys physically with them. I had a penis, they had a penis, we saw each other naked and we accepted each other like that, brothers with male bodies.
And lastly, I was reminded that I needed to belong to a team. I need brothers. Not one person. But a crew. And we all need each other. In the last couple of years, sociologists have been repeatedly saying how much men feel so isolated and have the highest depression and suicide rates in the world. They have no friends. I would argue the Church contributed to that as well.
Touch, time, transparency, teamwork. These 4 words reshaped my life. They gave me hope that I can make it.
They are not easily accepted by all in the church yet. It’s too revealing. Too intimate. It asks for too much trust and vulnerability. It goes against the evangelical culture of marriage being the go-to for intimacy.
Now it’s time to fight. The church is the light and salt for Christians who deal with same-sex lust and attraction. And Friendship in its most vulnerable state has the biggest, strongest, arms for that long hug that offers us a home of relief, acceptance, belonging, and true love that we are hoping for to get us to the continuation of the New Kingdom of Christ.
We don’t have to fight for our souls. God already had a plan set up for Christians like me.
To Friendship, he calls us, and to Friendship, we all must go.
