Your Sacred Self
Living Your Real Life
fathers and gay sons
Father Principle The Father Principle We can not live successfully without being emotionally fathered. If our fathers could not give us this exacting form of guidance in childhood, we must be fathered by other adults and by ourselves. Then we begin to embody the father Principle at last. If we fail to heal from father neglect and do not get emotionally fathered in a safe, rigorous setting or from our own depth, we will seek fathering inappropriately from lovers, employers, or from other authority figures, political or religious. When these inadequate father substitutes fail us, we may feel contempt for these surrogates and a deep despair. Until we resolve our lack of fathering, we will put men or other authority figures on pedestals hoping some of their power, even sexual prowess, will brush off on us, hoping to be fathered at last. Conversely, our anger at father and his neglect may cause us to undermine these father substitutes, resenting what they can not give us -- instruction in the ways of the father that we missed long ago. Unfortunately, either approach to men will not satisfy our need to have our own power and confidence to move in the world. Until we take steps to heal our father wound, we will always choose men, even women, who replicate our wounding fathers, people incapable of helping us find our power, and emotionally unable guide us in the ways of masculine integrity. We must find an enlightened guide (male or female) who can instruct us in the ways of the Father Principle, the ways of responsible power. Beyond that, we must father ourselves for the true Father resides within us and waits to connect us to our implicit value and power. By aligning with the Father within, we embody integrity of action. We don’t need to get power from another -- our power is inherent, it only needs to be developed, to be fathered. Affirm: I acknowledge my father wound and begin to father my Self.
Father’s Day
Desperately seeking dad
Gay sons – straight fathers
Wounded fathers
Masculinity, feminity and gender
The Father Principle, usually embodied by the male parent, teaches boys and girls how to leave home and succeed in the world. Assured of our worth, we are confident of our right to exist and of our ability to explore the adventure of life. Our exchanges have integrity, for nothing less would reflect our sense of honor, taught by father.
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Father’s Day
In June, we celebrate Father’s Day. For gay men, this may be a painful day for our memories of our fathers may be more filled with regret than gratitude.
Fathers, living in a homophobic world, do not always delight in having a gay son. More often, when confronted with a gay son, fathers feel uncomfortable and ashamed. Even if unspoken, the message is clear, why couldn’t I have a straight son? Gay boys feel the disappointment emanating from their fathers.
Growing up, gay boys feel confused by their homosexuality as well. Sensing we are different from the males around us, we need support, understanding, and reassurance from father. Instead we are rebuffed. We think it is our fault, for no one, especially father, tells us otherwise.
This is a painful and damaging dilemma for a gay son, not to have his father see, understand, and appreciate him for his unique value. This lack of witness creates a deep wound in the gay child. It can send the boy, as an adult, on a distorted quest for approval from inappropriate father substitutes, including other wounded gay men and lovers. This misplaced quest can last a life-time, seeking the love, missed from father, in all the wrong places and people.
Distorted dynamics generated by the father wound include: sexual exhibitionism and promiscuity hoping to be seen and appreciated at last; romantic obsession, futile seeking for lost love; and addiction, blurring this painful, primal rejection with substances. Other men or substances will never make up for not having been seen, appreciated and loved by our fathers when we needed it the most -- when we were boys. We are a wounded generation of gay sons.
Until we grieve the profound loss of father’s approving witness, we will continue in futile attempts in adulthood to recover what we never got -- father’s love. Until conscious, we will ache with a vague, unexplained emptiness for the appreciation of this most important male figure -- father.
Affirm: Not cherished as gay boys by our straight fathers, we must grieve this primal loss of father -- and father ourselve.
Desperately seeking dad
Richard related an incident during Pride week. He walked by a Gay bar several times -- it was mobbed. He was unable to go in, his stomach tied in knots, since he thought Jeff, the man he had been unsuccessfully dating, might be inside. Later, Richard realized that it wasn't Jeff he was looking for that night -- but his Father.
Richard always felt uncomfortable in bars. When he drank he got drunk and felt depressed. When he didn't drink, he remained out of the anesthetized "party" and was bored. He also knew the atmosphere was geared against intimacy. The blaring music made it difficult to talk. The alcohol altered moods and made sober talk impossible. Sexual posturing replaced authenticity. Richard didn't like the atmosphere of bars.
Yet he seemed to date guys who went to bars and felt left out. Left out of the world of men. At least that's how he twisted it.
With a therapeutic guide, Richard was able to re-evaluate this pattern at a deeper level. Sitting with his pain, he got an insight. The feelings were old and familiar. He was seeking not only his unresponsive boy-friend, Jeff, but his Father. Even though his Father wasn't an alcoholic, he had been a work-aholic and absent emotionally in his addiction when Richard was growing up.
Always at the office, Father was in a world Richard could not enter, a world where a Gay boys' feelings and needs were ignored -- not so different from the bar. Richard waited for, longed for dad, just as he was waiting for, longing for Jeff. The feelings were the same. Richard had recreated a dynamic from his boyhood.
With this insight, Richard walked away from the Gay bar, heart heavy but free. He realized Father or anyone else would never show up to console his little boy -- he must show up himself. And to love himself, he needn't wait another minute.
Affirm: As an adult, I become conscious of my father wound and no longer need to act-out this neglect with other men. For that, I am proud.
Straight fathers must honor their gay sons. The Bible’s 4th commandment says, Children must honor their parents, but this dictum needs to be reversed. Parents must honor the child who is developing and vulnerable. The developing identity of the Gay child needs special attention, since he varies from the cultural norm and from other children.
Not being appreciated by father is devastating for any child -- but for gay boys, this wound has a special crippling twist. Since we are different from other boys, we need reassurance that our difference is not an abnormality. We need to be told that who we are is not bad -- but good, a powerful variation of the human spirit. And we need to be told by our fathers to be convinced.
Maturity is required of men who father gay sons. Gay boys need to be held physically in their father’s arms and psychically in their father’s care. If the father can not abide a gender variation in his son, the son doubts his worth in a primary way, and his identity is profoundly undermined. With good fathers, gay boys mature, leave the family and enter the world with a sense of self and value, and a better chance at being unshaken by the storms of life, even the storms of the world’s misunderstanding of gays.
The idea of straight fathers nurturing gay sons may seem far-fetched, but that doesn’t change the need of the gay boy to be cherished by his straight father and guided into the value and beauty of his unique identity.
Affirm: Good fathering produces good sons -- including good gay sons, who grow into healthy, enomtionally integrated and spiritually alive gay men.
Wounded Fathers
The new father desires to parent properly, yet he feels a deep inadequacy when facing the child before him. The child’s needs echo his own needs not accommodated by his parents, and especially by father, the role he now plays.
The neglect of his past shames the new father and inhibits his responses. Feelings of warmth and tenderness, associated with femininity must be squashed. The son’s need for nurture is an embarrassment. An affectionate response between males must be repressed, for this is his training. The father may resent the child’s demands for masculine bonding and adventure as well, since this need was never met in his own past with his father.
The wounded father is out of his league as he realizes the emotional fullness child rearing requires. The painful truth reveals how little he got and how little he can give. The child begins to absorb this lack immediately, and begins accommodating the parent. But this is a distortion for a child is incapable of parenting an adult.
A gay son is in a particular dilemma with a wounded Father since this man can not generate nuanced, emotional responses. With a gay son, this father can not even rely on socially prescribed roles for male bonding. When so little was fostered in him, how can this wounded man hold his new son, with the additional complexity of homosexuality, in mature care and affection? Sadly he can not, and a deep wound is inflicted on the gay boy.
The demands of the any child may bring up such pain for the emotionally crippled father that his frustration may erupt in violence, overtly physical, or covertly emotional through ridicule or shame. Or, the overwhelmed father may simply disappear as a defense, retreating into the world of male activities, work or play, alcohol or drugs, diverting his energies outside the home, leaving the child behind.
Affirm: My wounded father does what was done to him -- he wounds his sons, inparticular, his gay son. Only stark honesty can break this tragic cycle.
How is this strange boy a gift? It may be hard for the family to accept a gay child as a gift. Yet perceived properly, he is just that, for he can liberate the family from its constricting roles and rules, its repressed feelings, and its resistance to grow beyond its walled-in definitions. The gay child’s very existence invites the family to question its assumptions, especially the narrow view that life’s sole purpose is the family reproducing itself and its values. The gay child is a doorway out of this closed system, and invites family members to move into a bigger world. The gay child can stretch the family’s limits that kill vitality and open their minds to curiosity. Fathers, inured in the male posture of the culture, may find it impossible to relate to a gay son. Standard male bonding through prescribed social roles fails in this father/son relationship. To defend his emotional deficiencies, the father may reject the boy, protecting his limited understanding of identity, even protecting buried and confused feelings about himself. Whatever storms the gay child endures and hopefully survives in the family, he eventually leaves to find his own way in life. Through a healing process, he can reclaim the vitality of his true self. Once healed, the gay son has an enormous gift to give his family and in particular his father. The authenticity of the healed gay child can lead the family to a more honest approach to feelings and a more genuine involvement in life itself. When the gay son returns with self-respect for a spine, the family can not deny who they see, and, if open, can learn from this liberating way of being. The message of an integrated, up-right gay man is hard to mistake or ignore.
The gift of a gay son
When a gay son is born into an average family, there may be concern. What does this variation mean? Have we done something wrong? Is this a refleciton of our onw pathology -- even though the fmaily denies having any. Straight parents and fathers in particular may be threatened by their Gay son. He is different. He varies from the prescribed gender role for males. The family may reject the boy like a body rejects a foreign object, banishing him, if not physically, then emotionally with the weapons of shame and disappointment.
Affirm: I return to the family, a wholesome, gay son with the gift of authenticity.
Masculinity, feminity and gender
What is a real man? What is a real woman? Truth is we are all blends of masculine/feminine energy along the continuum of gender.
Simply defined, the Masculine Principle is integrity of action, the just use of power, the ethical manner in which we move “out” into life, embodied in both men and women. The Feminine Principle is our honesty of feeling, how we use love to surrender “in” to our depth to find wisdom. Both are primal forces on the sacred journey of life and must be honored to live fully. Whether male or female, we are all blends of these primal principles.
If a father is comfortable with his identify, his own unique blend of masculine and feminine energies, he lives with both integrity of action and depth of feeling. He teaches these principles to his children by word and deed. He is not threatened by the gender variation in his gay son for this father is secure within himself and his own blend of gender. The healthy father recognizes his gay son as part of the landscape of human possibility. He is not afraid of what life brings into being. Integrity and depth honors life in all its aspects and does not demonize, or pathologize those who are different.
If a father is not comfortable with his own identity, if his masculinity is not tempered by femininity, he lives a masculine or macho posture. This mask hides buried fear that would destroy any who would question or threaten its sham authority (violence against gays are extreme examples). Macho posturing in gay men is as destructive as it is in straight men. When a false self uses the Masculine Principle, it wields great power for dubious purposes.
True masculine power honors the feminine. With unparalleled beauty, honest masculinity protects life and honors depth. That gay men are seduced by the counterfeits in macho posturing reflects our own confused and compromised gender identities, learned from a gender-phobic culture. We fear the feminine in men, yet fail to embody an authentic masculinity. Macho posturing or helpless femininity, in males, like any sham, will never substitute for true masculine power balanced by feminine depth. Authentic living, out of a true self, insures integrity of action guided by depth of feeling -- and the complexity of gender is honored.
Affirm: Masculine power, feminine depth -- I honor the blend of gender this is me.