Within the first couple of weeks as a Freshman, I met another young man who shared with me that he had been sexually abused as a boy. I opened up to him about my abuse. He was actually the first peer with whom I shared my story. Like me, he had been compromised by an older male and was conflicted about his sexuality and gender identification. We became roommates and over time he developed a crush on me. Actually, he was crushing both on me and on my (very first ever) girlfriend at the same time. Like I said, he was conflicted. When I announced I intended to marry my girlfriend, he threatened suicide, saying that "now he could never 'have' either of us". Shortly thereafter, he took to spending his nights in other male student rooms and bragging the next day about his homosexual activities, whether true or not. Regardless, that whole experience didn't help me in my own gender identification struggles. Was I really gay and that's why he was attracted to me? Was I simply in denial about my sexuality? Add to that the question which haunted me for decades: did my being abused as a boy by another male MAKE me gay??
Anyway, for the first time in my life I had a girlfriend. A REAL girlfriend! And I wanted nearly more than anything else to claim my manhood and confirm my gender identity. I was studying Christian ministry in a denomination in which homosexuals were an abomination at a college which expelled students without mercy who dared come out of the closet. I feared if I was gay I could never be a pastor, never to be able to worship, never receive the sacraments again and would most certainly be damned to a life...temporal and eternal...apart from God. Homosexuality was the unforgivable sin and I feared, through no fault of my own, I might have been stuck with that sin. Damned for all time.
As I've written before: I really do sympathize with LGBTQ women and men over their spiritual, emotional, psychological and sociological struggles. I know how it feels to question "what in God's name am I?" and fear that being true to myself could...would probably...would surely... land me in hell. It's hard enough being "different" in a secular society which won't accept you...even more so when you add the pressure of fitting into a religious environment. But enough about that.
I met my first girlfriend, and I asked her to marry me, and she said "yes"...so I wound up marrying my first and only girlfriend. I'm still married, I still love her; but with hindsight I realize part of my motivation to get find a girlfriend and get married was my need to prove to myself that I was straight as well as get over the abuse and mature into being a real man.
I didn't want to enter the marriage with secrets, so I worked up the nerve to tell my fiance about my brother; but I didn't tell about my sister. It was hard enough telling her about my brother and my fears that I might be gay, etc. I guess I felt I could blame my brother for what he did to me; but I wasn't so sure about what happened between me and my sister and I wanted to preserve the illusion of my virginity (I didn't consider male on male sex to be true coitus). So I told my wife and trusted her to keep one of my biggest, most precious (albeit dark) secrets to herself. I told her, and I trusted her.
Fast forward 2 years and in preparation for our wedding, my fiance and I find ourselves meeting with a pastor for pre-marital counseling; which to large degree is focused on the mechanics of the wedding ceremony. I had chosen to include certain family members in the wedding party; but strongly objected to my big brother from taking part. He could come to the wedding. He just couldn't be a groomsmen or anything like that. The pastor pressed me for my reasons why...and I held onto my secrets, only telling him that my oldest brother was mean to me when I was growing up. The pastor again pressed me, this time telling me I needed to forgive my brother and not bring these hard feelings with me into my new life as a married man. Eventually I gave in, still not giving up my secrets; but I gave in to the pressure, "forgave" my brother and gave him a role in the wedding ceremony.
About 5 or 6 years later, after the pastor had moved on to another congregation, my wife and I happened to be passing through his neck of the woods and stopped in to visit him. In a moment of privacy, just the 2 of us alone, I got up the courage to tell our old pastor the real reason I did not want my brother being part of my wedding. I say I got up the courage; but that doesn't seem to express just how difficult it was to reveal my secrets...to reveal this very damaged, very hurting part of my soul...my psyche. I told him what happened and I told him why I so strongly resented my brother. The pastor replied with "I know. [She] told me that years ago." I was crushed. With only a few words, he dismissed years of psychological, emotional and spiritual pain. It still hurts today, writing about it. Crushed. Devastated. Re-victimized. That son of a gun knew all along. When he told me I needed to forgive my brother and include him in my wedding party, he knew my brother was a rapist...MY rapist. I felt betrayed: both by my wife as well as by that pastor.
A similar event would happen nearly 2 decades later when, after finally gathering the courage to tell my mother-in-law about the loss of my childhood and resulting sexual confusion, she also brushed it away with "I knew that. [your wife] told me that a long time ago."
It wasn't just discovering that my wife had broken my trust; but more so that these 2 people could minimize something which I hated but was so much a part of me...that they dismiss it so easily without even offering any comfort or sympathy. Just a cold "I knew that". It took a lot out of me just to gather the courage to mentally revisit my past and reveal my deepest, darkest secret...and to have that secret trampled and treated as if it meant nothing had a devastating affect on my psyche. The 2nd time, with my mother-in-law, actually played a part in my first weeklong vacation in the Psych Ward.
I realize that people say and do things out of ignorance, and that there was no malicious intent on the part of that pastor or my wife's mother; but it doesn't change the effect their acknowledgement and dismissal of my past had on me. But I'm getting repetitive, aren't I?
I guess the point is that these 2 experiences gave me even more reason to keep my secrets to myself rather than talk about them, especially with people who had no clue just how damaging child sexual abuse has on the survivor even into adulthood. In the future, I won't so readily cast my pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).
