Married men with SSA - Should we be publicly open about it?

[fix]

Why would a man be talking about his sexual temptations of any sort? A married man attracted to a female coworker should not go home and tell his wife, “Hey, that new gal at the office is really hot! I’m really attracted to her!” Neither should he tell her that he is tempted by the new guy at the office.

Yes, temptations, and sins, ought to be discussed—with one’s confessor, no one else.

Exactly correct. Some things ought to be “in the closet”. They belong in the confessional and perhaps the psychiatrist’s office, not in public. We have been conditioned by pop culture to think not talking openly, and constantly, about our problems is unhealthy. The opposite is true. The Church, wisely, says people ought not advertize their problems.

 

[losh14]

My opinion is that you should not be open “to the world”. Most people will tell you to keep it a secret from your family and to do whatever makes you “feel good” or to get a divorce so that you can be “who you truly are” so that you can be happy. This is a lie.

I’ve gotta note that I’ve seen this as well, and it truly bothers me when a Catholic who tells someone “I’m gay/bi/have SSA and I choose not to yield to the temptation to be with another male.” is told “No, don’t do that, let me introduce you to this really cute gay friend of mine.” If it were the other spouse telling the same person “My husband told me he’s attracted to other men and I’m worried he’d leave me” the response would NOT be “Honey, let him go so he can be happy. He’s not happy with you.”

I concur with spiderweb. Be careful and focus on your relationship wiht your wife. I’m attracted to a number of people at my work and I keep my mind and heart on my wife. On one or two occasions I’ve actually asked for people to be removed from my work team, or for myself to be reassigned, because the work friendship BEGAN to look wrong. Run from temptation, always.

 

[LaSainte]

most married men don’t admit, or advertise or brag or disclose or come out with this temptation in hopes that it will edify someone else. why on earth would a husband want to hurt his wife that way?

Thank you! I wasn’t saying that no one experiences temptation, but how would my husband feel if I went around telling everyone “Oh I am soooooo attracted to those guys and girls from the porn videos! It’s a daily struggle for me not to watch hours of porno and masturbate to it.” That is humiliating for the entire family and has NOTHING to do with being egotistical.

Also, while it might not be a great thi g to stuff deep down inside (maybe talk to a therapist?), but I also feel that openly discussing these things can be unhealthy. Look at NAMBLA. It used to be that these guys just ignored their feelings for young boys, and maybe a seriously perverted few a tually acted on them. Enter the Internet, where every person with deviant thoughts can meet up with other people with deviant thoughts and feel “normal”. Now all of a sudden we have these guys supporting each other in their debauchery.

I’m not saying that the OP is in any way like that, just that gathering with a bunch of like-minded people has a way of “normalizing” deviant behavior in the minds of people. “Hey, it’s not so bad! Mike is a great guy and he LOVES to look at pictures of naked boys!”

Why be open about it? Are people open about their bodily functions? When Somebody is at dinner and they need to use the restroom, do they stand up and say “I have to take a shi*”, or do they stand up and say, “Please excuse me for a moment”? Going to the bathroom is nothing to be ashamed of and it’s a natural thing, but it’s embarrassing for everyone involved to be too open about it.

 

[revert_jen]

Your story is inspirational, and I admire the courage with which you have fought temptation. However…

But these objections miss the point! It’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s a temptation, like any other. Would you be ashamed if your children found out that you once wanted to shoplift something? That you once felt a strong urge to strangle a driver who cut you off? What’s the difference between these cases and SSA?

Thoughts?

Part of the difference is that it is extremely embarrassing, awkward, and painful for kids to have to know details of their parents’ sexuality, whatever the form. And by and large it is not necessary.

Another part of the difference is as LaSainte pointed out, it wouldn’t be all tea and crumpets for your wife, either. Yes, of course, men’s eyes stray, and they are attracted to other people, but as Fairwinds and Corki said, they don’t advertise it. It’s not kind to publicize it, and frankly, it’s not anyone else’s business, either.

I fear you may be having mistaken ideas about what “coming out” would be like, too. You are presumably picturing that most people who know about it will know the whole story. That’s probably not true. Lots of people (possibly including other children at your kid’s school) will only hear, “So-and-so is gay.” They won’t make the very important and true distinction between SSA and gay, because it’s not their life, so it’s not as important to them. Also, you are probably picturing everyone as believing all that you say about your experience. That also is probably not a realistic expectation. People are cynical, and many will assume that you came out with the information because in some way you “had” to. Many also won’t believe that you have remained physically faithful to your wife, who will probably be plagued by officious but possibly well meaning folks asking her about being tested for STDs.

You may say, and rightly so, that people shouldn’t be like that. But that is how people are, and you can’t change them by wishing it. And not all of them are bad people, just flawed like all of us, so the “good riddance” idea isn’t really appropriate.

A distinction that you might consider is that it is possible for things to be private without being shameful. Are you going to go public with how your last sexual intercourse with your wife went? Of course not. That doesn’t mean it is shameful, just that it is not anyone else’s business, and it would make people very uncomfortable to be told about it and alter your relationship with them for no reason.

There are a lot of things that are private to me without being shameful. You and I can talk about these private things here because we can be anonymous here. Anonymously or one-on one is the only way you should talk freely about your situation. I think you can help a lot of people by sharing your story that way, without materially worsening the social conditions in which you, your wife, and your kids live.

God bless you and watch over you and your family whatever you decide.

–Jen

 

[LaSainte]

Your story is inspirational, and I admire the courage with which you have fought temptation. However…

Part of the difference is that it is extremely embarrassing, awkward, and painful for kids to have to know details of their parents’ sexuality, whatever the form. And by and large it is not necessary.

Another part of the difference is as LaSainte pointed out, it wouldn’t be all tea and crumpets for your wife, either. Yes, of course, mens’ eyes stray, and they are attracted to other people, but as Fairwinds and Corki said, they don’t advertise it. It’s not kind to publicize it, and frankly, it’s not anyone else’s business, either.

I fear you may be having mistaken ideas about what “coming out” would be like, too. You are presumably picturing that most people who know about it will know the whole story. That’s probably not true. Lots of people (possibly including other children at your kid’s school) will only hear, “So-and-so is gay.” They won’t make the very important and true distinction between SSA and gay, because it’s not their life, so it’s not as important to them. Also, you are probably picturing everyone as believing all that you say about your experience. That also is probably not a realistic expectation. People are cynical, and many will assume that you came out with the information because in some way you “had” to. Many also won’t believe that you have remained physically faithful to your wife, who will probably be plagued by officious but possibly well meaning folks asking her about being tested for STDs.

You may say, and rightly so, that people shouldn’t be like that. But that is how people are, and you can’t change them by wishing it. And not all of them are bad people, just flawed like all of us, so the “good riddance” idea isn’t really appropriate.

A distinction that you might consider is that it is possible for things to be private without being shameful. Are you going to go public with how your last sexual intercourse with your wife went? Of course not. That doesn’t mean it is shameful, just that it is not anyone else’s business, and it would make people very uncomfortable to be told about it and alter your relationship with them for no reason.

There are a lot of things that are private to me without being shameful. You and I can talk about these private things here because we can be anonymous here. Anonymously or one-on one is the only way you should talk freely about your situation. I think you can help a lot of people by sharing your story that way, without materially worsening the social conditions in which you, your wife, and your kids live.

God bless you and watch over you and your family whatever you decide.

–Jen

Wow. Yes.

 

[LaSainte]

Oh fer cryin’ out loud.

@anruari: Perhaps it is the difference between having temptations and discussing them publically? LaSainte didn’t say she would be incapacitated by such feelings, just that she would have them. I think that is being honest - - why can’t the wife be open with the temptations she might feel if the husband can be open about the temptations he might feel? Furthermore, such feelings in the spouse are not uncommon, see any thread on men viewing porn and the wife’s reaction.

Thank you. Goodness, what an overreaction!

 

[LaSainte]

Thank you for having the courage to post this. It is not easy to talk about these things we keep secret and I applaud you for doing so, as well as remaining faithful to your wife despite your attractions to others.

I think a good guideline here would be, “what do you hope to accomplish?”, followed by “can you accomplish that without causing harm to others?” If you wish to give hope to other men with SSA, what kind of hope is it? Is it the hope that comes from knowing there are others with it, or is it the hope that comes from showing that a man with SSA can remain faithfully married to his wife?

For the second question, here you really must think of your wife and kids. We can’t just think of social standards, and whether based on those standards the children would be embarrassed. By the time they’re grown the social standards may have moved on very much. We must also think of their own moral compass, and one of the terrible difficulties that comes with discussing sexual matters is that it may call to question other, more fundamental teachings. If discussed carefully, one can show how living with SSA, without yielding to the temptation, doesn’t prevent one from being a faithful Catholic living in a state of Grace. But it is too easy to misinterpret a devout and holy life as giving license to engage in activity based on SSA. You must be extraordinarily cautious in discussing SSA.

Perhaps the best first place to do this would be in context of counseling. If your wife knows and you can freely discuss with her, perhaps volunteering to discuss with and minister to other couples who are struggling with one spouses’s SSA would be a fruitful approach to help lead others to Christ despite their thorns.

I’ll keep your struggle in my prayers, brother.

Love your signature

 

[Debora123]

Please read this wonderful blog by Josh Weed. I think you will find it both inspiring and beautiful.

joshweed.com/2012/06/club-unicorn-in-which-i-come-out-of.html

God bless.

 

[Joe_5859]

All very good points, but the OP must consider his spouse first and foremost in this situation. As far as I could glen from his post, he hasn’t even told her about his porn usage, and I wonder what her reaction to that will be, let alone his revelation that he is still struggling with SSA. It’s not exactly what a woman wants to hear - that her husband is attracted to other men. Before he even considered coming out to anyone else (he referenced telling others) he should have talked to her, because this could easily get back to her through someone else. And anything else he does must be with her consent. I suspect that he could do permanent damage to the life he has constructed.

Absolutely. The wife needs to be on board or it won’t work. I would assume the OP knows and agrees with that. I wouldn’t necessarily assume he hasn’t told his wife anything. He said: “My wife knew something about this, but I only let her in partly.” I’m sure he recognizes that he would need to be more forthcoming (if he has not already) if he were to make his story more widely known.

 

[losh14]

Yes, temptations, and sins, ought to be discussed—with one’s confessor, no one else.

I’d only caveat - with your wife, provided she can help you. When I was still struggling with indecency online and my wife found out, I told her the biggest thing she could do for me was to make sure I went to bed when she did. I’m more rested now, and when I can’t rest (the habitual excitement of 1 a.m. coming back) I sit in bed and read.

 

[thewanderer]

Please read this wonderful blog by Josh Weed. I think you will find it both inspiring and beautiful.

joshweed.com/2012/06/club-unicorn-in-which-i-come-out-of.html

God bless.

lol, you beat me to it. I was also going to recomend reading this blog.

 

[Polycarp1]

I don’t think you should necessarily be “ashamed” per se, but I would not be open about it. What purpose does that serve? Maybe if you were in some support group, or someone opened up to you about their own SSA, then your struggles would be helpful to them.

The reason I say this is b ause of your wife and kids. I would be humiliated if my husband went around telling people he was struggling with his attraction to ANYONE else. I would feel that it reflected on me as not attractive enough, or womanly enough to have his complete adoration. And if I were his children, that would be even worse, because they will see it as a betrayal of their mother and they will feel like they have to take sides.

Now, if you can see that your son is going through the same struggle, then perhaps share with him a small portion of your issues (not the part about gay porn), but otherwise, what would be the purpose of sharing this information?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

It seems from your post, that you have not told your wife about this porn addiction, and perhaps over time, she has assumed that your SSA is not a problem any more, either, since presumably the two of you have a someone normal sexual life. You cannot go public about your struggles with SSA until and unless she knows everything about you, and you will have to pray about revealing everything to her. Will she accept you, or will she be shocked and distressed to realize that her husband is still attracted to other men? Have you been masturbating when looking at this gay porn? Or do you fantasize about other males while you are making love to her? You see, you may feel a sense of freedom when you “come clean” to others, but your wife will not have that same sense of freedom. For her, this will be shameful and threatening to her self-image.

I would urge you to talk to your priest about this issue, confess your sins, and pray deeply about sharing your struggle with anyone else, even your spouse. Unfortunately I think you could end up destroying your marriage and family by doing so.

Juliane,

My wife knows all about my addiction, my attractions, and my recovery. She is the first person I shared it with in my recent recovery, and she is my most intimate confidante.

Don’t worry! I’m a fool, but I’m not that much of a fool.

 

[estesbob]

What an ego the world has given you! Do you seriously think that *any *man feels no temptation after he marries a wife?

We swear before God and before Man to “forsake all others till death do us part”. If that was so overwhelmingly natural as to not be subject to temptation then there’d be no need to swear it as part of the oath.

A man who is in denial about his temptations will be at high risk of being in denial of the sources of those temptations, and therefore will fail to avoid the occasions of temptation. - that is a sure route to failing to resist those temptations, and therefore failing to be faithful to His Wife.
The Psychology of many women is different in this regard, and many women do not feel this temptation while they feel nurtured and cared for by their husband. - it’s so very wrong to assume men’s brains work the same way - it’s just not true.

So if a man finds himself attracted to his neighbors wife he should publicly announce it?

 

[po18guy]

A part of SSA, in very many cases, is the overriding desire for recognition. Now, psychologists can opine until the last day regarding the motivation of and need for this desire. Just as the attraction is disordered, is not this desire for recognition also disordered and something to be mastered just as SSA itself is to be mastered? This is in like manner with each and every one of our disorders.

SSA is now being not only acknowledged, but empowered and enshrined in law. It is becoming a cultural icon. As with any insatiable appetite, this desire for recognition now demands more than acceptance - even its embracing, if not outright preference in our increasingly sterile culture.

No individual, especially the married, does anything in a vacuum. The two fleshes have become one. Both celebrate and both suffer. What is to celebrate in the public revelation of a disorder? How is the family helped - how are the children affected?

Personal validation is one thing, but love demands that it be suppressed for the good of those who are loved.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Thank you for sharing. This is the heart of the issue for me. And the key phrase for me is “in the right circumstances.”

I think you are onto something about not cramming the temptations into the closet. The devil often works via the veil of secrecy. He convinces us our sin is too awful to share. He wants to keep us in secret shame so that we feel terrible. This in turn makes us increasingly likely to fall into those sins again and again.

That said, I also think we need to take care as to how and with whom we share our struggles. I have often been edified to hear of others going through struggles that I go through and knowing that I’m not the only one and that there is hope. I think that’s natural for us to identify with and be encouraged by such sharing of stories. But then, I do not particularly care to share my deepest, darkest sins/temptations with my children. Nor do I particularly want to know the deepest, darkest sins/temptations of my parents. I had a friend once say that kids have a right to a good image of their parents. That thought has stuck with me ever since.

This is definitely good food for thought, Joe. To specify my thought: I think it is worth it to have a group of trusted Christians to which we can confess our sins – not regularly, but sometimes. The goal is to feel the love and acceptance of a community, especially when dealing with a sin that induces such shame. As for “more public” revelations, I do not think it would be a good idea for me to publicly shout out my sins, unless God very specifically indicated I should do so.

But I’m not so sure about temptations. Some single people like Wesley Hill are quite open about their same-sex attractions, which they do not consider particularly shameful or “dark”. They’re not dark, they’re normal enough – as is most every sort of temptation. It’s these temptations that I wonder about sharing with a broader group of people.

But your comments about my kids having a right to a good image of me gives me pause. Thanks for your advice!

 

[Allegra]

I wouldn’t be as concerned about your children being ashamed, but possibly being ridiculed by others. It’s a tough choice to make because once you “go public” with something controversial, you are opening yourself and your family to a backlash. On the other hand, it is very possible that your testimony could help lots of other people who have the same issue. If it was me, I would probably try to give my testimony in semi-private, such as a support group setting or something like that. After all, I think people’s sex lives are entirely too public as it is.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

spare your wife and kids the ridicule your need to come out will provoke. for most men, knowing that a man is attracted to other men results in a different kind of response (disgust)…

That’s because of a cultural taboo against homosexual attraction. Like it or not, however, that cultural taboo is gone and is not coming back. Most everyone younger than 30, these days, is not disgusted to find out that a male friend of theirs is attracted to other men.

I’m not worried about being ridiculed. If I make myself vulnerable and people ridicule me, that’s their sin.

(Oh, and your comment about “coming out” seems to misread my post entirely. I am talking about sharing a struggle, not about taking pride in the brokenness of my own attractions!).

 

[losh14]

This is such a good distinction to point out. It’s why we celebrate a coworker’s pregnancy, not the fact that she and her husband had intercourse 9 weeks ago.

A distinction that you might consider is that it is possible for things to be private without being shameful. Are you going to go public with how your last sexual intercourse with your wife went? Of course not. That doesn’t mean it is shameful, just that it is not anyone else’s business, and it would make people very uncomfortable to be told about it and alter your relationship with them for no reason.

This is a good argument why we’re called to live as we should, not as we are. I think all of us have personal demons that, while they must be confronted, are not necessarily meant to be shared, at least not broadly. “Being yourself” is often tossed around to refer to gay men to give affirmation for them to enter into relationships with other men, but such an argument would never be appropriate for a person with impulse control problems, or for pedophiles.

Also, while it might not be a great thi g to stuff deep down inside (maybe talk to a therapist?), but I also feel that openly discussing these things can be unhealthy. Look at NAMBLA. It used to be that these guys just ignored their feelings for young boys, and maybe a seriously perverted few a tually acted on them. Enter the Internet, where every person with deviant thoughts can meet up with other people with deviant thoughts and feel “normal”.

To put it as an example, if the OP were to organize a group for other men with SSA, it’d be best to manage it so that the men do not develop attractions for each other (or at least, so they do not act upon them, since attraction to one person can be a spontaneous and fleeting thing). Bring wives to the meetings, have a female moderator (to remind them of their wives), conduct the meetings in the church itself or another place that merits respect, and definitely don’t go out for drinks afterwards (your wives probably wouldn’t think this a good idea even if nothing happens).

 

[fix]

A part of SSA, in very many cases, is the overriding desire for recognition. Now, psychologists can opine until the last day regarding the motivation of and need for this desire. Just as the attraction is disordered, is not this desire for recognition also disordered and something to be mastered just as SSA itself is to be mastered? This is in like manner with each and every one of our disorders.

SSA is now being not only acknowledged, but empowered and enshrined in law. It is becoming a cultural icon. As with any insatiable appetite, this desire for recognition now demands more than acceptance - even its embracing, if not outright preference in our increasingly sterile culture.

No individual, especially the married, does anything in a vacuum. The two fleshes have become one. Both celebrate and both suffer. What is to celebrate in the public revelation of a disorder? How is the family helped - how are the children affected?

Personal validation is one thing, but love demands that it be suppressed for the good of those who are loved.

There is much wisdom here.