Sports, Physical Pain, and Masculinity

People tell me that I'm really strong. I am. And I am not.

Emotionally, I've survived through all kinds of hell. But physically, I'm a wimp. Break my heart and I'll compose a most brilliant piece of work. Stub my toe and I become a pathetic baby.

Or stub my thumb... my right thumb, to be precise.

I'm going out to play a game of real basketball with real players.

:manly woo hoo:

I discovered two things. (1) Jogging at one's own pace is not the same as sprinting up and down the courts. I was breathless after 10 minutes. (2) I can hardly function without my opposable right thumb. (I told you I'm a wimp! Cut me slack already.)

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My experience today brought back childhood memories.

Football, we call it. Where fast balls slam into your gut or hard shoes smash against your shins while you're breathless and coughing and sweaty and itchy and dying. Add to that a strong, fast, sporty elder brother who is yelling at some useless, fat-assed faggot for missing a ball, or running too slowly.

Who? Me? pant... pant...

No wonder I went into music instead. And also hanging around girls, drawing pictures of princesses with them.

IT BLOODY HURTS TO PLAY TEAM SPORTS!

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Scholarly question #1: How many men with SSA grew up with gender identity disorder?
Answer: Many [ref 1,2].

Scholarly question #2: How many boys with gender identity struggles did not play sports with other boys because they were very sensitive to physical pain?
Answer: ____

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While icing my thumb joint, I seriously contemplated quitting.

Brother B called. (Don't remember him? He's one of my straight friends who knows about my struggle and is teaching me to play basketball. Here and here.)

"Hey, so did you enjoy basketball today?"

"Well... yeah. I found out that I'm either allergic to something in the air or I'm asthmatic. Also, I injured my thumb a couple of times." And then I forced myself to get out of my self-pity thumb-pain funk and eeked out a "but overall, I enjoyed myself."

Because, damn it, I did! I just wish I didn't have this asthma/allergy thing, and learned how to handle a basketball better so that I wouldn't hurt my thumb.

"I saw you. You did pretty well. I mean, you went in there and did some good moves."

"Hmm. Hum. Well. Yeah."

Thanks, brother B, point guard extraordinaire. I guess I didn't do too badly given that it was my second time playing basketball. After all, these guys really did know what they were doing.

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I think part of embracing maleness is to embrace physical pain. I don't know why I am so sensitive to it. I see it in my son. He is so afraid of getting himself hurt, while the other boys around him take all kinds of physical risks. And he is also, at the same time, incredibly emotionally sensitive--a gifted artist, for sure.

There is something to this. I need to think more on it.

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In the meantime, it's confession time. I did it again. Looked at pornography. This time, I even masturbated to it. Heterosexual porn, though. Seeing men's goodies alone just don't cut it for me anymore. I need to see naked women and hear their moans. This is the third time it's happened. But the heterosexual porn does not feel as emotionally charged as I remember the gay porn felt. It's lonely being a heterosexual man. I can't quite explain it. It's a lot more lonely somehow.

Note: I am not sanctioning looking at porn or masturbating to it. The above is a *confession*. I see it as sin and I have repented of it, and told my wife about it (I also confess to her *every time* I fall with porn or masturbation). I am processing authentically with the hope that it will lead to greater transparency and healing... somehow.

90-Day Fast Broken & Heterosexual Pornography

On Day 23 (April 28) of my 90-day fast, I succumbed to pornography and masturbation. It happened twice, once during the day, and once during the night.

Here's the post-mortem:

I had not had desire to look at porn since meeting Brother A seven weeks ago. I wanted the real-life intimacy Brother A gave me more than the sexual fantasy I conjured through looking at porn of men. And so, there was no desire to look at gay porn.

I allowed myself to have sex with my wife during this 90-day fast. But traveling away from her over these weeks has been tough (I feel for single men). It had been almost 20 days with no sexual release. Brother A suggested over-the-phone sexual intimacy with my wife. It worked out really well. It even made me call her more often, and it improved our relational intimacy.

But yesterday, while doing some analysis on my project, something happened on the internet that led me to wonder about sex. I kept surfing, looking at images. Before long, I was looking at video clips online. My accountability software has been disabled since it was giving me trouble. The fence was down, and after allowing myself to be sexualized through google images, I was numbed to the boundary and walked over it.

The sites I used to frequent no longer excited me. I found gay porn pretty repulsive. Thoughts that came included, "why would men do this to themselves?" I turned to other sites, and began to look at heterosexual porn. Before long, I found myself hooked.

The images, sounds, feelings were just like me being intimate with my wife. A man and a woman having sex together. I thought of me and my wife. I imagined the sexual energy and excitement the couple felt. I longed for it.

And now, I am afraid.

For the past 7 weeks, I did not look at porn because what I used to look at no longer interested me. Now, I have something that does, and I am afraid that I will become hooked to images of men and women having sex.

I was tempted to look at just women alone, but could not bring myself to do it because it felt like it would violate my loyalty to my wife (I know, it's messed-up reasoning, but that's the way it felt). The last thing I want is to allow myself to fully sexualize my feelings for other women -- already, I had a sexual dream about a woman a few nights ago (I've only had one other such dream in my entire life).

I confessed my sins to my wife and my new-found brothers. I confessed and asked for forgiveness from the Lord for my actions. I am seriously concerned now that I have a "heterosexual problem."

I have always used the argument that my SSsA problem is "no different" than a heterosexual man's problem. I need to work on my SS lust as they need to work on their OS lust. But I argued it based on head-knowledge. Now I know it experientially.

Any difference?

I don't know yet. But I feel like I can go to other Christian men and get support more easily. At least it helps me to feel like I can more easily bond with straight guys because we have the same temptations. There is still a sense of shame, but it feels different, a little more... normal?

Oh, I know what it is. The shame doesn't have that "double-whammy" component to it, i.e. the added shame of it being homosexual porn. (I know sin is sin, but it feels harder to confess to other men that the porn I struggle to overcome is homosexual.)

Anyway, this is all so raw, I am still feeling pretty down-in-the-dumps about it all. [And if someone leaves a discouraging comment, I will delete it.]

I will get back into my fast. No better time to repent (in heart and in action) than right away. And I'll decide by the end of the day what to do about internet accountability software.

Today, April 29, begins again Day 1 of my 90-day fast.

Like a dog that returns to its vomit...

I fell on Sunday night. The computer people took off my accountability software as it was giving me problems. So on Sunday night, when I had some time alone, I decided to "check out my healing" by looking at porn.

The first time I did it, I noticed that I no longer had a sexual attraction to my usual stuff. In fact, seeing a "straight guy seduced" felt completely wrong to me at a visceral level. I turned to look at the heterosexual porn and found myself identifying with the guy, and enjoying the beauty of the woman. It aroused me greatly.

After confessing to wife what I did and praying for forgiveness together, we were able to make passionate love. I was completely present.

I had trouble sleeping. So in the middle of the night, I got up, and went back to the porn.

I think deep down, I was grieving the change.  Masturbating to male porn had been my friend for so many years.  It had offered me safety, relieve, and comfort (not to mention all kinds of feel-good chemicals in my brain).  But now, the attraction was gone.  At some level, I was grieving the loss and wanted the attraction back.

Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. (Prov. 26:11)

The fool doesn't think he is being foolish; he repeats his folly because that's what he is used to doing.  He has not learned new, adaptive behavior.  Trouble is, there are snares and there is real Enemy.  So the fool, if he is not careful, may lose his life because of his folly.

(Okay, back to the porn.)

At first I could not find what used to be there for me.  No attraction to this.  No attraction to that.  But I would not stop.  I kept on looking.  Then all of a sudden, there it was: two men in a most intimate loving posture, and it was sexual.

WHAM!

I fell.

It wasn't just a behavioral fall, like a quickie to relieve tension.  I really, really wanted to be with those guys.  It was a deep emotional and sexual longing.  And the desire lingered even to the next morning.

I looked for my vomit, found it, and the Enemy made sure that it got shoved all the way back down my throat.

- - - 

Brother A came to the rescue today.  I told him everything.  

At first, I didn't want to tell him.  It was as if my sexualizing of male-intimacy was a most serious affront to the holy love that we have for each other.  

When Brother A embraced me and forgave me (in Jesus' name), and reassured his love for me, it was as if Jesus himself embraced and forgave me and reassured me of his love.  It took a while for me to be able to accept it.  I was feeling deeply ashamed.  After some time of talking, shame finally turned into humble acceptance of forgiveness.

I don't want to go back to my vomit, ever again.  I've learned my lesson.  May God, in His grace, not take away the change that He has allowed me to experience over the past three weeks.

Being Authentic As A Path To Healing

I need to be authentic on this blog.  I need to say what I really feel.  Honesty and authenticity is the only way I can move forward. 

Even in my deepest vulnerability and desperation, I don't want pity.  Nor the embarrassed reaction of an onlooker trying to cover up my naked shame.  

In reaching out with my bloodied hand, I am waiting for only the hand of the scarred healer to  reach back in full authenticity.

The raw nakedness will now be shown.  Parts still raw and bleeding, parts healing.  I'm telling it like it is.

I've masturbated twice in the past two weeks (the second one was today, an hour after I made my last post).  Both times, it was from fantasizing about being sexual with a straight man.  

The first time, I was drawn into sexual arousal from reading about a gay man becoming intimate with his straight friend and eventually "seducing" him to have sex.  The second time, I was desperate with a sense of anxiety over work, and I found a picture of a good-looking man (just some regular Joe, really, and fully clothed) and imagined being sexually intimate with him.

Both times, I was moved to masturbate out of a desire to be intimate with a straight man in a most vulnerable state.  These men don't even have to be naked for me to be turned on.  It's the fantasy of intimacy that is arousing, not the physiological sexuality.  I need to get this really, really clear in my mind, and not forget.

And yet...

I still feel more male than ever.  And I am not making it up.

I'll write about that in the next post.

Pausing & Falling -- And Changing?

I had put a pause in accountability reports last week so that I can attend to the project I am working on.  It has been almost two weeks since I put on that pause.

In that time, I have masturbated twice, and once I fell to pornography online -- last night.

One of the biggest hindrances to purity is not to have accountability. And so, I am taking some time to write this, and to be accountable again.

As for the porn last night, I found myself interested more in the memory of what I used to enjoy rather than what I was seeing right there and then.  The more I work to help other men overcome their own SSA, the less I find SSA appealing.  Even the most attractive male figure feels to me now as "just another man."  The strength, the security, the power that I used to attribute to them no longer seem quite so potent.  

In a sense, over the past two weeks, I was more affected internally when I fantasized those two times than when I looked at porn.  When I see the men in flesh with my eyes, they look... well, like me.  And I certainly don't quite see myself as the masculine savior that I project onto the men I fantasize about (not real people, usually images that I have seen in pictures or old memories of porn when I used to be really given into it).

I think I am changing, on the inside.  Why?  Because when I looked at the porn, I saw no so much men that have attributes I don't have, but that their attributes are not very different from my own--and thus, not so attractive to me anymore.  

I am wondering if I am indeed growing into manhood at a deeper level?

Right now, I really do feel like a man, and can hang out with other men, even the crude ones that drink, smoke, and ogle at women. I think I can even connect with them at the unspoken emotional level, and have them feel like I am one of them.  Why? Because I feel that way, especially after my experience of looking at porn last night (mostly of straight men), and feeling like I am just looking at one of my friends, and I am not really very different from them.

Am I beginning to self-identify with straight men at the core of who I am?

The only thing that I am afraid of doing now is to begin fantasizing about women.  I want to do that.  I want to look at women on the internet and masturbate to fantasies about having sex with them.  Yes, I have a wife, and I can make passionate love with her, but aside from her, I have not allowed myself to fantasize about women, even though I am starting to think that maybe I should.

Should I?

Fell Again

I fell last night.  Internet pornography.

I will write more later.  I have been thinking what's gone wrong this week, after 3 weeks of "success."

Accountability is good, but it's hard to feel so exposed and vulnerable.  I am ashamed of myself, but I'm trying not to dwell on it.  I'm not being proud or avoiding.  It's just too painful to expose my same-sex sins to other men, straight men.  You must think of me as less-than, reject, worthless.  I know better in my head; but in my heart, I pretty much hate myself.

The worst part: the people I am helping are doing better than I am.

Only in writing can I be so vulnerable.  I have nothing to hold on to except for the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for me.

Quick but Important Post

Monday: Finally was able to be intimate with wife.  It was great.

Tuesday: Things were well, but decided to put a deadline on my work.  Pushed myself to work extra hard, double the effort.  The stress was being felt, and I found myself fantasizing a little more than usual.

Wednesday: Couldn't sleep--woke up after 5 hours.  Felt miserable.  Had a stressful exchange with wife in the morning.  Left for the gym.  Went into shower.  Masturbated.  There was an attractive guy there that stimulated me.  I tried to fight it all the way, but once I began to touch myself, it was too late.  In the afternoon, the stressful exchange turned into a huge argument.  It was resolved but left me exhausted.  I went to nap.

Thursday: Things are stable again.

Friday: I will be going to the gym again tomorrow.  I want to write this so that I am accountable before I go.  I don't want to fall again.

When I Don't Write

A long day of work today.  I started my day by writing in this blog.  I wrote because I was wanting to masturbate--some kind of anxiety surrounding work.  Writing helped.

At the end of my work day, I felt good about having been productive, but I also felt down.  At that point, I should have blogged again, but I thought I would not write so much and create more burdens for my readers.  And that's when I fell.

Triple X Watch has some loopholes.  For instance, it doesn't catch when I look at sexual images on Wikipedia.

Oops.  Too late, another secret out.

I fell in terms of succumbing to Wikipedia images.  But not to masturbation.  Those images are pretty benign compared to the other stuff I used to look at.  But still, I fell.  Or maybe "almost fell" because my bottom line is masturbation.

I moved on to other things, caught up on my blog subscriptions.  That helped.

But at the end of that, I felt down again.  Empty.  I still wanted to masturbate.  

The wife is not available to me, and I am still weary of going close to her.  At any time, she might react again and hurt me more.  It helped that she apologized today and tried to make up for it.  It showed that I am not insane to think that she is an emotional wreck.  But it doesn't make relating with her any easier.

It's 2 a.m.  I need to sleep so that I can wake up on time to exercise.  But I felt I needed to write, to process.  Because when I don't write, I seem to fall.

Question is: Are you reading?  And is this too much?