Re: Suppressed interest in girls?
Submitted by Splash! on January 30 2002 04:04:54
In reply to Suppressed interest in girls? submitted by Jules on January 29 2002 16:51:23
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Did you feel free to act on your feelings for girls? I remember back in pre-school I had a crush on a certain teacher who used to wait with me at the end of day before my mother picked me up. This teacher may have only been a teenager at the time. I remember thinking how beautiful she was -- I wanted to be around her all the time. But one day she was gone. On my block in the neighborhood, there were only girls to play with, at least until I was 9 or 10. I fell in love with one in particular, and got along well with the others. We'd pretend house. I'd be the daddy, and they'd be the mommies. We also acted out several television shows. One day, when I was 8 or 9, I rode my bike to a different neighborhood. One of my friend's girlfriends came out of a house and they played together. I didn't seem to fit in with what they were doing, and then the girl's brother came out. It's all still very clear in my mind. He was my age, maybe a year older or so. He was blond-haired, and instantly I fell in love with him -- something inside of me ached to know him. He only played with us for a minute, and then his mother yelled at him -- something about not finishing his chores. He went back into the house. I wanted to follow him SO BAD!! But instead, I waited and waited and waited. He never came back out. I was heartbroken. On the playground at school, I was often found playing with girls -- especially during 1st and 2nd grade and maybe 3rd grade. But some of my guy friends made fun of me. "You like playing with girls?!" I was confused. "Why not?" And they'd say, "Girls are gross" or "You're a sissy." I also remember them spreading a rumour that I had kissed a girl, as if it were a bad thing. So I stopped playing with girls -- even the ones in my neighborhood. Then in 5th grade, I was told that if I even looked at a girl I was lusting for her in my mind, and that this was as bad as already having sex with her. So then, not only could I not play with girls, I couldn't even look at them! Well, I still looked at them. Certain girls were very attractive to me. I still read the sex books and looked at dirty magazines, but now I felt guilty for doing any of this. Girls became dirty to me, or at least things I shouldn't touch or want to touch. However, there were some exceptions to this, and I still messed around. But in my mind, I felt the guilt. Another thing that may have affected me is seeing how my brother interacted with girls. He always went for the easy lay. In my mind, all girls were an easy lay. That's all I saw in my neighborhood. Something about that turned me off from girls. How could they so easily go from one guy to the next? I didn't want "that kind" of love -- that's not love. My suspiscion is that for most boys growing up, their interest in girls simply becomes so great that any interest they had in other boys is swamped and forgotten. But for this to happen they need to feel free to allow their interest in girls to grow. I think you may be right. My feelings for girls always seemed to be stopped or hampered. I wasn't able to freely express my interest in them. I had to hide my first girlfriend from others. I couldn't dare tell anyone I french-kissed a girl. "Yuck!" One time at a church retreat, I fell in love with one of the girls, and I kept wanting to hang around her, but the youth pastors kept saying, "No!" This girl liked to put her hand on my leg. "No!" I'd try to talk to her after one of our meetings. "No!" It was very frustrating. In my case I was not able to express my interest in girls simply because I had been taught from a very young age (far too young) that it was wrong to "lust after girls" because of Christian morality. I'm not saying I was consciously suppressing my interest in girls, but that ingrained belief must have had a subconscious effect. I think that's what happened with me too. It's almost like I had to set aside my interest in girls, hoping that I could come back to it later when it was more accepted -- "when you get married." Hmm. If my mind knows that I have a belief that it's wrong to lust after girls, then it's going to deal subconsciously with a rising interest in girls by supressing it, before it gets to my conscious awareness. The subconscious mind is very good at "protecting" us from conflicting feelings. Yes. But I was never told I couldn't lust after boys. I was only told that if I look upon a "girl" that I was committing adultery (having sex) with her in my mind. They never said that of boys. So, maybe somehow, I felt less guilty about looking upon boys in this way. Maybe I thought it was more normal and accepted? Maybe this is why so many priests who are called to be celibate have problems in this area? By contrast, I'd never had anything drummed into me about "not lusting after boys" because that was never in the picture at home at all, and so there was nothing in my subconscious mind that worked to suppress that interest. (I'd had a general warning against "homosexuality", but that was something adult men did, so it didn't impinge on my boyhood interest.) There was a lot of talk about homosexuality in my neighborhood, and it always seemed to me that it was something freaks did, and I wasn't a freak. I mean, I wouldn't actually have sex with a guy, so I couldn't be gay. I thought being gay meant having sex, and what I was doing was only fantasizing about boys (their bodies, getting to know them, etc. -- nothing about having sex with them). So somehow I was able to justify that it was okay to fantasize about boys (as long as I wasn't going to have sex with them), and that it wasn't okay to fantasize about girls (because I would most likely have sex with girls -- all men eventually have sex with girls). As long as the thoughts didn't involve sex, I felt okay about thinking thoughts of boys but not of girls. Gosh, how unhealthy is that? A boy who doesn't allow himself even any hint of rebellion against his parents until his teens, because he's afraid of offending their moral code, which he has come to share so much that it represses him. A lot of people would say, "So, what's wrong with that?" I think if we've experienced it for ourselves, we know what's wrong about it, and we need to keep it in mind when dealing with our own kids (whether they be sons, daughters, neices, nephews, students, whatever). And I suppose that was my view of what God was like as well, until much more recently. Wow, just realise how much our view of God is shaped by our parents! Let's all do what we can to provide positive advice to boys growing up today! I only recently learned about God's grace. I always viewed God as an angry father who expected only the best out of me, and if I didn't give my best then He didn't love me as much. Or if I wasn't interested in what He was interested in, then I was in the wrong and wouldn't be accepted or loved by Him until I changed my interests. That was my father, and I projected it upon my Heavenly Father. Thank God for the Word which has shown me differently. And thanks for the reply and new insights, Jules. It's been healthy. Splash |
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