I honestly hope it’s not too late to talk about the original topic of this thread.
Dan: I feel your pain. I can’t say I know exactly what you’re going through, but I hope that I can help in some way by sharing what I’ve gone through with masturbation. I’m sixteen. I don’t know if that makes what I have to say more relevant or not, but I’m throwing that out there anyway.
I found out masturbation was a mortal sin a looooong time ago, back in the Seventh Grade, when I’d already gotten used to doing it on a daily basis. I did try to quit after I found out, but my first (pathetic) attempt lasted less than twenty-four hours. I gave up after that for years. I even tried to rationalize my way into thinking masturbation was fine–I said stuff like “Well, the pope never said it was mortal sin while speaking ex cathedra, so I don’t have to believe it is.” Of course, as time passed and I learned more and more about the nature of the church and the doctrinal continuity it validly claims from antiquity, I slowly realized that there was no rationalizing my way out of the sinfulness of masturbation.
I decided to quit back in June, when I was still fifteen. It was hard, and I messed up a couple of times after deciding to quit. But I’ve been “clean” for over five months now. So, what I’d like to say is that it isn’t impossible to kick the habit. You can expect to still feel sexual desires and urges constantly, but whatever. You learn to brush them aside. That’ll probably come off sounding like nonsense, and I get it. It’s hard to retrain yourself to think in less sexual ways, especially when you’re sixteen (and I don’t think being one year older would make much of a difference). And the urges themselves never go away, but the way your respond to them–by learning to brush them aside–can indeed change.
Of course, I guess your situation is complicated by the whole being gay thing. In the end, it doesn’t really make a difference, because we’ll (hopefully) all be in Heaven, and there’s no such thing as sex up there. But here it does. Knowing you won’t be able to marry or have a family or sex… That has to be awful. If you’ve already guessed, I’m straight, so I probably do have some trouble imagining how deep the implications of being gay are for a Catholic. But you just have to pull through in that situation, as others have to when faced with difficult situations as well. That’s a lot easier said than done, but “God will not allow you to be tempted beyond your strength,” and resistance is possible. Humans always seek love, and I get that. I want a girlfriend and stuff like that. But we have to remember that we as human beings seek love only because we are ordered towards the ultimate love, God. It is in Him that we find fulfillment in that regard.
I said before that I probably do have some trouble imagining how deep the implications of being gay are for a Catholic. Actually, I’m not too oblivious in that regard. You said before that you “realized that [you] liked guys around the saaaame time every other guy knew they liked girls.” Actually, I sort of went through the same thing. I remember back in Sixth or Seventh grade, when every other guy I knew started becoming infatuated with girls, I was being drawn towards guys. Sure, I said I was straight, but it felt like a denial. I was sure that at some point, I’d have to admit that I liked guys and was gay. And heck, this feeling persisted until the time I turned fifteen or so. I don’t know exactly what happened, but since then I became largely uninterested in guys and increasingly more attracted to girls, to the point where I can now say I’m straight and definitively mean what I’m saying. Every time I said it before felt like a lie. From what you’ve said, I don’t expect that a similar thing will happen to you, so I only say this to illustrate that I sort of (and only sort of) get what it means to be gay and Catholic, because previously I became convinced that I’d end up gay. But I would like to say that our obligation is first and foremost towards God, and that, despite who we’re attracted to, we don’t know what he holds for us in the future. We just have to trust that he’ll see that things work out.
