I decided to wait and see what other people wrote about this first, partly because it's quite hard to suss what you are really getting at with this post.
Can I put it all a different way?
When I was in my early 20's I fell totally in love with a guy who was almost exactly my age. I was a lodger in his mum's house for about six weeks one summer. We spent long summer evenings listening to Mahler together. It only took a few weeks for it to get really serious, but then I only had a few weeks anyway . . . . . I remember sitting with him in the garden: we were both reading. It meant I could sit and watch him without his being aware of it, wishing with all my heart that this amazing summer could go on for ever, but already grieving over the fact that it wouldnt. Eventually my feelings for him slipped out accidentally during one of our long deep conversations.
It came as a shock to him but he let me continue the relationship as friends right up to the day he got married. We went to concerts together and wrote to each other a great deal.
Up until I met **** I had only loved twice and they were both much younger boys, and, although the love was deep and painful for me, it was always only from a distance and never communicated. But after **** I went on the gay scene for the first time and met a couple of guys who I liked. I wanted to 'sort myself out'. But neither of them were **** and for me sexual stuff seemed utterly meaningless without the depth and I still yearned for evenings of Mahler and our deep conversations.
In the end, 'sexual stuff' wasn't only meaningless but seriously impossible. The following summer (I was working abroad most of the year) I arranged to meet one of the two guys I had met on the 'gay scene' and we tried to make it a sexual relationship. I did like him a lot and I was attracted to him as well but I was totally unable to 'do' anything. (He needed me to lead.) That night was sheer hell: I froze completely and I suppose it was the following day as I wandered the streets in a sort of daze that I realised that the gay scene was only making things worse. Although I yearned for a full-on relationship, it wasn't sex I needed, it was something much more.
So what was wrong with me that sex was so impossible? Was it some sort of deep puritanism? some sort of fear of letting go? Some sort of self-loathing? It wasnt a case of me being under-sexed. Not at all: quite the opposite: I was as horny as the rest of them, until I actually came into the presence of another person. Then: nothing.
Then I have to ask myself: could I have had a full-on relationship with **** if he had been gay? The very thought of it, several decades later, makes me tremble.
It's not possible to draw conclusions. It's quite possible that if my life had had a different shape and I had persevered with the gay scene I might have met someone who was patient enough and emotionally involved enough to forgive me my initial frigidity. Love might have done it. My pride didnt let me get that far. I stopped the gay scene and went back to my work.
I have concluded that a large part of my attraction to boys is the very absence of sex. I identify with them because I share their asexuality and it is at this point that I become locked into a cycle. With psychiatric help I might have been able to get over these barriers but psychiatrists are only for rich people.
I have avoided talking about the spiritual aspect so far but I will mention it here because I think we have this in common: perfectionism. It scars my entire life: everything I do needs to be as perfect as possible. If I cannot get anywhere near it I suffer terribly and have to leave off trying. Flaws in my work leave me aching and desolate. Experience has shown me that the boys that I have loved share this deep insecurity. A great part of my love for them is the desire to heal.
My sense and need for God stem from my insatiable need for perfection, coupled with the impossibility of ever getting near it. My attraction to boys is a part of that need also. Ultimately though, my inner being has the last word and it is unequivocal: the only thing which is more beautiful than some young boys is God Himself. It's as simple as that.
Since my arrest, no longer able to teach, I worked in a place where I met young men much more frequently and was often enthralled by them. I have come to see that a life spent working with young children is bound to strengthen the BL cycle because one doesn't meet people that it is possible to have a full-on relationship with: especially if you take your work as seriously as I did. Furthermore, working as a teacher necessarily precludes any special friendships with the children.
Real love, I have eventually come to understand, is the only thing that can break the cycle of perfectionism and failure. In real relationships each person constantly forgives the other for not being perfect, and far from being a 'broken promise' it becomes a source of the very love itself in a quite miraculous way. It is only love which can break the human heart and it is only in the broken heart that God can really make himself known. Let me make myself clear: the heart, like the egg, is made to be broken.