A few days ago the man I’ve been seeing as my therapist announced the upcoming end of his mixed-orientation marriage. The responses by many members of North Star have gotten mixed up with my own feelings, I having formed some kind of connection with him due to the intimate nature of counseling. So in order to clear my head and answer any questions about my feelings, I’m writing this post.

I first heard about Josh Weed years before moving to Washington and eventually meeting him. As I was coming out as gay to my siblings, two of them (separately and independently) asked if I had read a coming-out blog post by some Mormon man and his wife. I read the post and thought it was interesting, but didn’t remember anything other than his name.

Fast forward about four years to a few months into my new Washington life. I’m starting to wonder if I might have some repressed trauma or clinical depression and tell the only other out gay man in my local church congregation that I’m interested in finding a therapist. He tells me about Josh and it feels like a sign. A gay Mormon therapist living nearby and married to a woman. He fit all the checkboxes to make my parents and me comfortable with his ability to understand all the various influences in my life. I contacted him and got set up to begin sessions.

I was immediately impressed with him. He didn’t act like the other counselors I had met with before. He was bold and understood everything I was going through. We were able to begin destroying some of the walls I had built on the very first day. I agreed with everything he was saying, even when I wouldn’t dare to express those things myself. With his help I was finally able to start seeing beyond the deep canyons I had carved out for myself.

Whenever I’m thinking about something that might be scary, or hard, or confusing, it’ll often feel as if there are multiple voices in my head, each championing a certain perspective or concern. There’ll be the voices representing my parents, or my church, or some random stranger that might think I’m crazy. My own voice might speak up, but usually it’s not as forceful as the others. After all, the voice representing me has the burden of representing what I think of myself, while all the other voices are free to exaggerate any fear or stereotype to further their cause.

It didn’t take long for Josh to join the pantheon of voices in my head. His voice says that I’m not broken, that my feelings are 100% real and natural (and okay), that I’m worthy of love and friendship, that I need to take care of myself, that my needs are not less important than the supposed desires of everyone else. In short, his is the first voice strong enough to defend me from all the others I’ve gathered in my life.

I haven’t met with him in some time. I was going through my faith re-evaluation period, and by the time that was settling down it was Christmas season and I took a break from thinking too hard about things. Now that the holiday rush is over and I’ve had my mental vacation, I was ready to make another appointment with him.

And then he made his blog post announcement, and the people in North Star saw his statements about lack of romantic attraction and how dangerous and deadly it can be to be in denial about part of yourself. And they had feelings about it.

My first feeling was shock, when I realized that the blog post they were talking about was from someone I knew, and that they weren’t very happy about it. They were taking certain quotes from the post and I needed to read the whole thing to see if I agreed with their conclusions, and if the post lined up with my image of who Josh was.

It’s weird, reading a post like that, when you know you were talking to the author while all of this was going on. I wondered a few times if anything I had said had influenced him (since he does mention his patients), or if what he had said to me was colored by his personal life. There was this analogy of a porcelain facade I had used in one session, and I wondered if he would use the same imagery in this post (he didn’t). I wondered if any of the advice he had given me should be discarded in case it was motivated by his own private pain.

But as I’ve said, I agreed with all that advice as he gave it. He was a conduit, an external voice to help filter my internal noise and provide another perspective. He taught me to be more confident and strong, to notice my fears but not to let them silence me. Ninety-eight percent of all my conclusions were formed between sessions; he just helped get me unstuck when I hit a feedback loop. I stand by everything I’ve learned because of him.

So on the subject of the church, romance, and marriage…

In one of my early sessions with him I brought up how, if asked for more detail, I would explain that I was theoretically *bi*sexual, since I had felt some level of attraction towards a very few girls, which obviously meant that I had potential of “true hetero love.” But honestly it was a wholly separate galaxy from how I frequently felt about random boys, and that I had never felt the same level of attraction towards a girl. I had felt a desire to get to know them, to talk to them, to make a new friend. But it was never romance, never physical.

And the difference between those is – forgive the horribly unoriginal image – night and day. I’ve described it before on this blog as hearing a distant flute on the wind versus standing the midst of a marching band. They are so distinct that my insistence that they are forms of the same creature was based entirely on the hope of my parents and religion.

To me, marriage is the strongest partnership between two people. It’s a promise to support and protect each other, no matter what, and above all else. Whether that’s ‘til death do you part or for eternity, or between same or different genders, it isn’t as important as the connection itself. How that connection manifests and is maintained is up to the people. Some people are asexual, so they don’t get the same rush from sex the rest of us would. Are they somehow less capable of having a meaningful relationship? Of course not, but they and their partner do need a way to show and stay in love. And since people change over time, so would the relationship. Hopefully everyone can figure out how to preserve whatever spark lit the flame, but that’s not guaranteed. And holding on to a relationship out of determined willpower alone is not healthy.

I hesitate to criticize the church, even in private, because I habitually forget offsenses before they sink in. I mean, I can see the damage done to me growing up that might have been different had my religious culture been less traditional; but I am not angry at the church, its leaders, its members, or even God. I can see how people may be hurt by the culture, and the actions of the leaders, but I think that things are changing for the better, even if it’s taking longer than I’d want. I’m not a crusader for change; I just want people to be kinder.

Those last paragraphs really did a great job of distracting me from the original motivation for coming here, so I can’t think of a way to end and wrap things up nicely. But I’ll try:

I’m happier now than I was before. I’m still afraid of many things, and I question myself all the time. But I’m starting to be more honest with myself and others, and it’s let me make peace with things that used to cause me constant anguish. I hope that others can find the same. Be kind. Don’t decide another’s fate for them. Work to overcome whatever’s holding you back, and don’t be afraid of the past or future. Just do your best, now.