Homosexual relationship ending, help requested

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Hey everyone. I’m a “revert” who has recently come back to the Church after a prolonged absence (over 20 years), but who had been living for the past seven years in a same sex relationship.

Last night, after finally working up the courage to do so, I told my partner that I could no longer offend God by engaging in acts of sexual intimacy with another man. I am beginning down a road right now that I know will be difficult - a commitment to chastity appropriate to the stage in life where I am in life right now. If anyone has any suggestions for resources I can check out to help me in this walk, I would be most appreciative if you could point me in that direction.

Also, my partner is taking this very hard. He is not Catholic, but has a strong belief in God and comes from a Protestant background. But he is also convinced that God made him the way he is and that same sex intimacy is not offensive to Him. (I used to be of that same mindset before coming to see the truth in what the Church teaches.) Does anyone have any suggestions, apart from continuing to pray for him (as I am already doing) as to how I can help him better understand and accept that I can no longer engage in this sort of behavior, but that this does not necessarily mean that he is being hopelessly abandoned, as this is how he currently feels. It’s breaking my heart.

At the very least, if you all could keep us in your prayers, I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
 
God is great!

I know it is with great struggle and personal sacrifice that you have returned to the Church and embraced her teachings.

I really encourage you to look in to the Courage ministry. It should be able to provide you with support and resources and possibly resources for your friend.

www.couragerc.net
 
1ke said:
God is great!

I know it is with great struggle and personal sacrifice that you have returned to the Church and embraced her teachings.

I really encourage you to look in to the Courage ministry. It should be able to provide you with support and resources and possibly resources for your friend.

www.couragerc.net
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I second the Courage ministry.

I strongly admire your bravery in standing up for what God wants and not what other people think what God wants. I hope and pray others around you are inspired by your example.
 
I’m sorry I don’t have any helpful resources, but I will pray for you and your friend. :signofcross: I pray for your strength and courage to live a chaste life, and that you will be lead to only people who will encourage and guide you on this journey. Also that God fill your heart and soul with peace in your decision and grant you much joy and fulfillment along the way.
 
Perhaps if you explain this as a desire on your part to live a chaste life (no sex outside of marriage) as opposed to a rejection of your partner, he could understand better.

It’s great that you are taking this step. I have found that a lot of protestant gays are Palagians. That’s a heresy that says that basically there was no fall, no original sin, that we are all as God wants us to be, and we can work out our salvation on our own

Because if you believe in the fall, you realize that we are NOT as God intended, that original sin has corrupted us, even corrupted our genes (if you think there’s a genetic link). That would mean that God did NOT make gays that way, they are suffering from the effects of the fall, and should resist the same sex attraction.
 
I will pray for you and for your partner. People do not develop these close relationships without much good in them. That is why people find it so hard to step away from them.

Human sexuality is such an enormous blessing and good that even in its misuse so much good remains that we can hardly imagine why it might be considered evil.

I heard of a story once, where a Catholic man in a long-term relationship came to the same conclusion you have reached and was determined to break the news to his partner although dreading it. When he finally did it, the partner, a born-again Baptist told him that he had already reached the same decision . . . They did not break up the household but they lived chastely thereafter.

I don’t know whether the story is true but I sure hope it is.

May the Lord guide you through this in peace.
 
I have nothing to offer but my prayers and admiration. You have done an incredibly difficult thing and carry a cross much greater than most. You and your friend are in my prayers.

MJ
 
God bless you for trying to live as God wants us to. Perhaps if you tell your partner that you still love him, but because you love him and want heaven for him someday, you can no longer be a party to helping him sin.

As a hetero, there are many people I love too. But I don’t have sexual relations with them, because it would be a sin for me and for them. But not having relations with them doesn’t mean I’m emotionally abandoning them.

Perhaps your partner can see that too. If it’s really love, it will endure in a chaste relationship. If it was only really lust and interdependence, he will move on to someone else.
 
I will pray for you and your partner. We all have burdens to bear and yours is certainly a heavy one. I cannot help but think that the rewards in Heaven will be greater for those who overcome such tremendous burdens and seek to walk with Jesus. May God bless you and your partner.
 
Breaking up with any sexual partner in favor of chaste living is hard, hard, hard, especially so with a same sex partner because (as I understand it) so much of one’s personal identity is bound up in one’s sexual orientation. People may forget that there is more to one than JUST one’s sexual orientation. May God bless you and reward you for your willingness to give up what gets in the way of obedience to Him.

If your partner is Protestant perhaps he could better understand Protestant ministries to homosexuals, that explain why homosexual activity is against God’s will and that support people seeking to leave that lifestyle. I recommend Focus on the Family’s www.lovewonout.com. They even refer to other denominations’ websites and ministries under their Resources and Referrals section. I know less about Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays, www.pfox.org, but they seem helpful at first glance.

I admire your courage. Don’t give up seeking chastity and seeking God:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Mt 5:6,8

May you feel God’s presence alongside you as you walk this long, hard road. Best wishes, Christine
 
Wow, I too admire your bravery. I too will pray for you and your partner.
 
I don’t know you, your background or your convictions about the very nature of SSAs. But if you are interested in exploring the possibility that you are not INHERENTLY homosexual, but rather some part of your life experience, possibly in combination with genetic risk factors plays a role that is controllable and possibly even reverseable, check out

NARTH.

Google will do.
 
I would suggest to you a Ministry called Beginning Experience International. They have a web site www.beginningexperience.org They have programs for people who are Separated, Widowed, or Divorced. The pain you are feeling from the separation of your partner is much like the pain others in this group have and are experiencing. Check to see if there is a group near you. Peace
 
David Morrison wrote a book about his journey out of the gay lifestyle. He has a close but chaste friendship with his former partner. David also has a blog here. Also, there are many people who are not gay who have had to say to their partners that they would not longer offend God by engaging in acts of sexual intimacy without benefit of marriage.This is something many Christians have had to do on their journey toward holiness.

David was a guest on Catholic Answers Live; link [here](javascript:popUp(‘http://www.catholic.com/radio/event.php?calendar=1&category=&event=1090&date=2000-01-06’,‘435’,'485’);). I also second getting your hands on the Theology of the Body stuff; Chris West makes it very accessible.

You have my prayers also.
 
God bless you for your witness! As a member of Encourage, I will say it is always a cause for celebration when someone is touched by prayer and God’s grace and leaves the lifestyle. You are truly among friends here. There are quite a few of us who have walked your path and can testify to the joy and peace that God has provided for the journey.

I recommend reading Fr. Benedict Groeshel “The Courage to Be Chaste.” You can get it on amazon for just a few bucks!

You are in my prayers!
 
brittrossiter said:
Hey everyone. I’m a “revert” who has recently come back to the Church after a prolonged absence (over 20 years), but who had been living for the past seven years in a same sex relationship.

Last night, after finally working up the courage to do so, I told my partner that I could no longer offend God by engaging in acts of sexual intimacy with another man. I am beginning down a road right now that I know will be difficult - a commitment to chastity appropriate to the stage in life where I am in life right now. If anyone has any suggestions for resources I can check out to help me in this walk, I would be most appreciative if you could point me in that direction.

Also, my partner is taking this very hard. He is not Catholic, but has a strong belief in God and comes from a Protestant background. But he is also convinced that God made him the way he is and that same sex intimacy is not offensive to Him. (I used to be of that same mindset before coming to see the truth in what the Church teaches.) Does anyone have any suggestions, apart from continuing to pray for him (as I am already doing) as to how I can help him better understand and accept that I can no longer engage in this sort of behavior, but that this does not necessarily mean that he is being hopelessly abandoned, as this is how he currently feels. It’s breaking my heart.

At the very least, if you all could keep us in your prayers, I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
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Wow. Great sense of deja vu just blew through. Over 13 years ago now I went to my then lover of over 7 years and said “I love you but may we please stop. May we please stop having sex?”

I did so with enormous misgiving because I did and do love him very much and I was uncertain that he would not react by ending our friendship. Indeed, that was one of the possibilities for sure! But over the next year, 18 months, two years, we each came to understand that what we shared as friends, the experiences we had had together, the hurdles we had crossed and persevered through, gave us something which was far above and beyond what we had in the bedroom (which as far as it could was pretty darn good, I remember we both agreed at the time 😊).

But persevering through what I have gradually come to recognize as a time of testing has brought us to a much stronger place in our friendship that we ever had as sexual partners. For example, previously we had used sexual activity as a means of papering over some of the underlying disputes and conflicts we had as friends. Stopping the sexual activity meant that those things had to be confronted and worked through with the result being a stronger friendship after.

People widely assume that if you are sexually intimate with someone then you must be intimate with the in other ways as well. But that is not true. There are no shortcuts to genuine, authentic and lasting intimacy. It requires time, honesty and risk taking and all of these, particularly the last two, are simply difficult.

Like you, my partner previously had a protestant background, as had I, though if anything he was even perhaps more burned by church experience than I had been. But through God’s grace he shared this past Easter with me as a Catholic and, if anything, our friendship now stands on firmer ground than it ever has - in part because while we still share a home we do not share bedrooms or beds. Each of us knows that the love we have for each other has nothing to do with what we look like or what either one of us can do for one another or demands from one another. The love we share has moved from Eros, the love of romance and sexual expression to Storge, the deep love which family members share, which is appropriate because in the fullest sense now we have become brothers in Christ and dual heirs to His promise.

So, persevere. Do your best to reassure your former sexual partner that your leaving his bed does not that you are necessarily looking to leave him, and certainly not that you are looking to leave him for another sexual partner. Bravely confront the debris of your friendship which may now float to the surface; codependence, hidden resentments, miscommunication and the tragedies of hidden assumptions. Give thanks to God for his role in your life and ask the Holy Spirit to help guide you, for good friends are our bulwarks and fortresses against the challenges of each day. Petition St. Aelred of Rielvaux for his prayers and patronage as he knows and wrote eloquently about the importance of even passionate friendship in religious life. Cultivate prayer and do not give up.

Hope this helps. I will pray for you both.
 
Thank you DCMorrison, your experience is very inspiring and gives me hope. While the direction my relationship with my partner takes is not entirely within my control (he has his free will), I’ve made it abundantly clear that I am not rejecting him or trying to run him out of my life or cast aside the close friendship that we’ve developed over the years. He is having trouble seeing that right now, but I will keep praying for him. I hope our friendship can grow just as yours has.

Thank you, and God bless every one of you, for all of your prayers and your kind words.
 
brittrossiter said:
Thank you DCMorrison, your experience is very inspiring and gives me hope. While the direction my relationship with my partner takes is not entirely within my control (he has his free will), I’ve made it abundantly clear that I am not rejecting him or trying to run him out of my life or cast aside the close friendship that we’ve developed over the years. He is having trouble seeing that right now, but I will keep praying for him. I hope our friendship can grow just as yours has.

Thank you, and God bless every one of you, for all of your prayers and your kind words.
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Yes, like I said. It took us up to two years to work through what our friendship meant and means once we stopped having sex. And I DO NOT mean to suggest it was easy or painless - if only the codependency that had to be worked through! But it could be done, can be done and, at least in our case, was so very much worth the trouble, pain or sorrow to get to this point.

God bless you and I will keep praying.👍
 
God Bless You on this journey. I actually think it would be better to not have contact with your expartner for a long time if not forever, because of the temptation. I was never one to stay friends with an exboyfriend.

I do want to highly recommend:
amazon.com/Can-Homosexuality-Healed-Francis-MacNutt/dp/0800794095/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7/105-6379699-2304404?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188696067&sr=8-7
Homosexuality Can It Be Healed by Francis Macnutt

(as well as his other books on healing)

and also calling his ministry, Christian Healing Ministries
christianhealingmin.org/
for healing prayer

is there a priest with a healing ministry near you? look for a healing mass where you can be prayed over

and SPEND TIME IN EUCHARISTIC ADORATION. LOTS OF TIME.

God Bless
 
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