In ancient times, near the temple of Apollo at Delphi a sign stated "Know Thyself". To me, the sign means, in part, that in order to ascend to higher levels of knowledge we must first unflinchingly look at our own "stuff". We must examine with a cold eye those parts of us which we share with other mammals: our drives, instincts and so on. Additionally, we must look at what has shaped our personality; the grist, good and bad, which we are trying to mill into fine flour.
We are each a puzzle even to ourselves, to say nothing of how others view us. This blog is about me gradually putting into place some of the pieces which make up who I am in this lifetime. I figure that if I am as clear and honest as I can be about each of the little pieces, that over time I will begin to see myself more clearly.
I will not be able to approach "knowing myself" without delving into the issue of sexuality. I think that the mental illness of my parents plays a part in both the context and the events of my childhood which relate to sexuality. One of the symptoms of bipolar is hyper-sexuality. Clearly the main model I had (mom) was capable of high charged sexuality and, at times, indiscretion. She never molested me or was blatantly inappropriate with me in a sexual way. Nevertheless, she had a strong sexual field and I was modeling it 24/7.
In addition to the modeling aspect, there is also the fact that mental illness made both of my parents less able to be good parents. They were not very tuned into me, what I was doing, what my feeling life was like. They both suffered from fairly acute narcissism.
As near as I can tell, both of my parents were sexually robust individuals. By the time I was born their marriage was on the rocks. In the first four years of my life both of my parents had affairs, according to my mom.
About a year after my parents divorced and soon before my dad moved away, I was regularly molested by a female babysitter over a period of several months. At the same time I had a "girlfriend" in my second grade class with whom I would walk around the school yard, my arm around her shoulders.
Later, after my folks were divorced and dad had left, we had a close family friend who would undress in front of me and other kids. His philosophy apparently was that our culture was too prudish and nakedness should be seen as normal and nothing to hide. He also had frequent relationships outside of his marriage, though I didn't know that until later. Years later, when I was a young adult, I started to get the picture that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with me. He was in a long term marriage then (as he is now) but frequently had sexual relationships outside the marriage. When I was in my early to mid-twenties and sensed he was trying to groom me as a sexual partner, I began steadily distancing myself from him.
But going back to when I was a kid....So, due to the molestation, by the time I was seven years old the door of sexuality had been opened wide to me. My introduction to sexuality was to be the sex toy of a messed up fifteen year-old girl who did not give a shit about me. She happily dominated me and didn't give my welfare the slightest thought.
For several years after that experience my sexuality was, for the most part, outwardly dormant. There just isn't the outlet for most elementary-age kids. At age nine I "touched tinkles" one day with a girl my age who lived across the street but it seems like a fairly typical childhood kind of thing.
Another experience I distinctly remember at about age nine is going to a man's house who was a friend of my mom. She introduced me to him and he directed me to a wood pile where there were tools for building (he was a carpenter) before they both went inside. I spent a half hour or so playing with the tools and wood and built something I thought was pretty cool (I forget now what it was, exactly). I went into the house to share my project with them and looked around for where they were. I finally found them on the back deck, having sex. I was shocked and backed away. Even though I was close to them they did not notice me. I went back to the woodpile feeling a bit odd. Mom came out a bit later and we left. I never said anything to her about what I saw. Nor did I ever see the guy again.
Though I remained fairly innocent in my behavior as a child, by the time I hit puberty things began to change in a hurry.
In middle school there was a girl whose butt my friends and I would regularly pinch. She told us to stop but we didn't. Today it would be clearly called sexual harassment or perhaps worse. The teacher either never saw what we were doing or overlooked it. Whenever I think of what we did to her I feel a huge sense of remorse.
When I was twelve I encountered a girl, a few years older than me, who was very drunk. We were riding the city bus and got off at the same stop. As we walked along the road she began strongly coming onto me and invited me into her home. We had sex and afterwards she passed out. I walked home. I never knew her name or saw her again.
My friends and I began also watching pornography on a fairly regular basis. There was a pay-tv station that most families had at the time which aired "porno flicks" every Saturday night after midnight. I could watch them at my house or at my friends' houses, either way. I don't remember parental oversight ever being much of a concern of ours. I am sure that at least some of the parents knew we were watching them, but just didn't say anything. I don't think my mom was aware that we were even watching them.
A man visited us one summer who was distantly related to us and a bit of a wild guy. In his mid-twenties, he drank heavily, had some wacky ideas about how to get rich quick, and would buy my friends and I both alcohol and expensive porn books. Mom apparently had no idea he was doing any of this. He was staying with us for a while and regularly would hang out with my friends and I away from parental oversight. He even took me, age thirteen, on a two-week trek into the woods to go gold dredging. He had worked as a diver before and one of his get-rich-quick schemes was to dredge gold in a place near where there were other mines. We hiked into the spot and he had the dredging equipment he had recently bought flown in. We worked at dredging for several days and only got a few, small flakes of gold worth maybe a dollar total. My mom was only too happy to let me go with him, a good example of mom's judgement being a bit lax. This relative is currently serving a fairly long prison sentence for assault and battery.
By age thirteen I was having sex occasionally with girls from school. We'd just come to my house after school and do whatever we wanted. My mom wouldn't be home for hours. By the time I was thirteen I was smoking pot, drinking, and having sex. Then I had pneumonia. I was sick in bed for two weeks and lost twenty pounds. Whereas before I had been a little chunky, now I was trim and good looking. I got a lot of attention from girls. I loved it.
Luckily, I also dated girls who were not ready to have sex and that was fine with me too. I suppose like a lot of males (especially of that age) I was ready to have sex at a moment's notice. But if a girl was not into it, that was ok with me too. Ironically, I could be somewhat of a moralizer at times as well. I had a friend who cheated on his girlfriend. I told her about it and wagged my finger at him. I guess I was lucky to keep him as a friend. Especially since a few years later I would be cheating on my girlfriend as well.
Part of me wanted to have a stable relationship with a girl and part of me was just interested in having sex. As a junior I dated a girl for almost a year, then had sex with her sister soon after we broke up. As a senior I had a steady girlfriend and another girl I was dating on the side.
I suppose I can understand my poor judgement, to some degree, in light of my dad's suicide and mom's psychotic episode and newly named mental illness: manic depression. I was very freaked out and confused and had no one to talk to about the cause of my upset. I had to play the role of "The Responsible One" and could not count on anyone from my family being tuned into what my life was like. I did not share the fact of my mom's mental issues or my dad's suicide with any of my friends or girlfriends. Or anyone. I was in denial and there was no one who could "ground" the issues with me in a healthy way. So I just dealt with it all myself, internally. The fact that I was not consciously processing any of these traumas meant that I was capable of unpredictable and self-defeating behavior.
Men were also attracted to me from the time I was a teenager. My high school's head football coach had guys come over to his house and made them coffee and irish cream. I went with a friend a few times and we both had our Tarot cards read by the bachelor coach. A few times I started going by myself and he began to come on to me. One time I let him kiss me though I never went back to his house after that.
By the time I was seventeen and graduating high school I was very, very confused.
The year after high school I lived overseas with a family and went to one more year of high school. The family was politically quite liberal but conservative in other ways. As I was dating during this year abroad my confusion no doubt showed itself. I wasn't sexually active for most of the year but I am sure confusion in the area of sexuality was written all over me. The mother of the family was a high school teacher and used to mentoring young people. She talked to me one time about how she and her husband had been married a long time and had a wonderful sexual relationship. She emphasized that the place for sex is rightly in a long-term committed relationship.
I remember her words clearly and that they had deep meaning for me at the time and in the years afterwards. She only said it once but I took her words seriously. No one had ever spoken to me about what a healthy, monogamous relationship was like. Certainly the movies and TV shows I was watching had few, if any, good examples. Perhaps her words rang in my ears all the more due to the paucity of such models in my life up to that point.
As I returned to the States I was in a different frame of mind. I could definitely feel the power of my sexual urges but I became more discerning. I had more sexual partners in four years of high school than I have in the twenty four years since high school.
Soon after I returned from being overseas, age eighteen, my new attitude was tested with an echo of my first post-puberty sexual experience. An attractive young woman, very drunk, approached me and asked me for a ride home. I let her in the car as I could see she could be getting in a lot of trouble if she didn't get to a safe place to sleep it off. When in the car she began strongly coming on to me. I rebuffed her and let her gently off where I found her, as she wouldn't tell me where she lived. It felt, even at the time, like I was being tested to see if I had grown since the previous experience at age twelve. I patted myself on the back, happy that I had passed that test.
I dated a few girls in college. I was still very confused about the relationship part of dating. I could feel my sex drive but had almost no idea of how to sustain a healthy relationship that had a sexual component. The molestation and the general context of sexuality in my childhood meant that my sexual boundaries were extremely permeable. If someone was attracted to me it was very difficult for me to contain mirroring back the vibe.
As I look back at the past fifteen years I feel tremendously fortunate to have come as far as I have in regards to my sexuality. I declared my intention to overcome my deep, deep confusion around sexuality when I was in my mid-twenties. I have taken steady steps to heal myself since then. And my wife has played a crucial role in helping me to develop myself in this area. Her love for me and background as a counselor was a great mix in her helping me to strengthen my sexual boundaries and clarify my thinking. I feel that I have come steadily towards achieving the intention that was born in me as I listened to my host-mom's words on the matter during my year abroad.
It seems likely I will always be swimming upstream in regards to the sexual boundaries which were breached when I was six years old. I can continue to make incremental progress with the wounds I carry from that experience, but I doubt I will ever be totally healed from it. As I move forward, the intention I carry in regards to my sexuality sets up and strengthens the boundaries which would be significantly more solid had I not been molested.
It has also become clear to me that I am a naturally monogamous person. Monogamy just makes sense to me based on honoring the person one is with. I would not feel safe if I were married to a person who was having sex with other people. It's just not something I could ever feel remotely comfortable with. Likewise, I honor my partner and myself through a strong commitment to monogamy. For me this is a core value.
More to come in subsequent posts.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
No comments:
Post a Comment