The Velvet Rage (12 page)

What eventually breaks this vicious cycle? It is the slow process of learning to tolerate and reduce shame rather than avoid it. He can learn from the mistakes of his past only if he is willing to carefully examine them. When these mistakes remain shrouded in shame, he cannot afford to investigate his own life. He keeps moving forward, trying not to look back, and as a result, finds himself going in a circle. When he learns skills for dealing with shame, he eventually realizes that he can tolerate the distress of examining his past. With the shame reduced, he can begin the work of clearly seeing his own behavior patterns and making needed changes.

K
yle passed the same public park on his way to work every day. Often he would take note of the cars in the park's lot. There was rarely anyone in view; the owners of those cars were traversing the wooded trails just on the other side of the lot. The trails really didn't go anywhere, but of course, that wasn't the point. These were “sex trails” and the park was at times one of the busiest places in town to hook up with other gay men.

At least twice a week, Kyle would leave a half hour earlier than he needed to for work, just so he could stop by the park and check out the scene. If someone caught his eye, he would follow him into the woods until they both found a place that felt safely camouflaged. There they would grope each other, perhaps jerk off, or have oral sex. He'd be back in his car in no less than twenty minutes and on his way to work.

Kyle hated his job. He held the title of program director at a nonprofit organization, but the reality was that he was little more than a secretary for the executive director. Every chance he could
during the day, he would log on to a porno website and spend a few minutes surfing its content. Mostly, Kyle was excruciatingly bored and somewhat depressed about the state of his career.

Kyle was very clear about why he stopped by the park so often. It was without a doubt the only excitement in his day. It was the one thing he looked forward to and the suspense over who he might meet enlivened him. The park made him forget about his dead-end job, even if it was for just a few precious minutes.

Some gay men in stages one and two use sex as Kyle did: to help manage their emotions. Whenever they start to feel lonely, sad, anxious, or bored, they head to the local gay bar, bathhouse, park, rest stop, chat room . . . you name it, to meet up for quick, anonymous sex. The distraction the sex provides helps them to break the ongoing flow of whatever distressing emotion they are currently feeling. When it's over with, the distress may return, but often it is somewhat reduced.

The real detriment in such behavior—aside from such dangers as HIV and the destruction of committed relationships—lies in the fact that sex with men becomes a necessary method for changing your mood or alleviating distress. It begins to play a central role in your psychological equilibrium, and you can't effectively function without it. Whenever things get rough at work or home, you head for the nearest place to hook up with men.

This is what is known as a
process addiction
—using a behavior to regulate your mood. At first, any process addiction is a choice
to engage in a behavior that helps to radically shift your mood. Over time, you become dependent on the behavior, and it starts to feel like it's out of control. Regardless of the consequences of repeating this behavior, you keep doing it to feel better. Again and again, you go do it, until you either find another way to regulate your mood or your life becomes consumed with the addiction.

Gay men who actively participate in frequent anonymous or casual sexual hookups are loath to call what they are doing an addiction, but the signs are all there. If you look just beneath the surface, you find a life that is consumed with pursuing sex. They
need
the sex to make life livable, and in the process, often destroy the best things in their life. Relationship after relationship falls apart because they either have an affair or become so miserable when the relationship cools off sexually that they feel compelled to find a new supplier of the drug they crave, walking away from lover after lover to find it.

So, exactly how do gay men use sex to manage their moods? To start, let's take an emotion, such as loneliness or anxiety, that causes you to panic and begin to think all kinds of catastrophic thoughts. “I'll always be lonely, and eventually die a lonely old man.” Or “I'm completely incapable, and I can't handle this.” Each emotion has its own set of common catastrophic thoughts that it can trigger, but the result is the same. Not only do you feel the distressing emotion, you panic because it feels as if the emotion will never pass. The emotion becomes intolerable, and you search in earnest for a way to avoid feeling it. That's where brief sexual encounters often enter the picture—not only do they
bring distraction, they sometimes hold the power to change your mood completely.

Of all the distressing emotions that can induce the gay man to seek out sex, loneliness is probably top on the list. Loneliness as an emotion has some unique properties, and the foremost is that the more a gay man tries to avoid confronting his loneliness, the more control the emotion has over his life. The fear of being lonely increases, and the anticipated distress heightens dramatically. It's like the monster under the bed: The longer you are unwilling to look under the bed, the greater your fear grows. Not until one of your parents forced you to look under the bed and see that there was no monster hiding there did the fear begin to decrease. Likewise, not until you are willing to sit with your feelings of loneliness are you able to realize that it really isn't all that distressing, and most of the time, passes quickly.

Instead of allowing himself to feel lonely, the gay man may try to avoid it by seeking out a brief sexual encounter. As long as he is engaged in the “chase” and eventually captures his prize, he is emotionally distracted and his mood often shifts. The problem is, however, that this effect is usually temporary, and often the loneliness (or threat of loneliness) returns. The gay man must do it all over again.

Learning to effectively manage your emotions is a skill that is often underrated in its importance. Each of us feels many different emotions during the day, from joy and happiness to anger and sadness. Being able to manage those feelings effectively and
prevent yourself from being overwhelmed by them is a key to fulfillment and, in most areas of life, success.

Kyle relied heavily on sex to regulate his emotions. This worked for him until the day that he got into a relationship with a really wonderful man. It was only a matter of time before the relationship sparked some distress, and Kyle started feeling the strong urge to seek out sex with other men. In his more rational state of mind, he didn't want to do anything to hurt his relationship, but when he was distressed with emotion, all he wanted to do was escape into the embrace of another man. As a few years passed, Kyle secretly returned to his habit of frequenting the park. Now he was feeling terrible guilt about his behavior and wanting to change before his lover found out about what he had been doing.

John and Joe had been in a relationship for many years. John consistently wanted sex more than Joe, although Joe felt that he had a perfectly healthy sexual appetite. John, on the other hand, became noticeably upset whenever they went more than a few days without having sex. Joe complained that when they had sex, it often felt mechanical and thoughtless. He described it as a “compulsion” of John's that he was expected to comply with on a regular basis.

Like in the case of John and Joe, more than a few gay couples have the problem of one partner wanting sex more often than the other partner. Of course, this is not always because the oversexed partner is using sex as a way to regulate his emotions, but often it is, particularly when the lack of sex creates inordinate distress for the partner. It takes on a great importance in the relationship, and can become a serious problem that drives two men apart.

Some gay men who have a particularly difficult time with self-validation rely on sex to feel good about themselves. This kind of gay man needs to see others excited by his presence and adoring his body in order to feel worthwhile and acceptable. If other gay men fail to notice him or be attracted to him, he begins to question his own value. On the surface, this may sound a bit juvenile, but in reality it is something that many, if not most, gay men struggle with to some degree. We rely heavily upon the adoring reactions of others to our presence for our own self-esteem.

When a gay man relies on sex for his self-esteem, he often develops something of a phobia about aging. Age, in his mind, becomes synonymous with “no sex,” and he decides that he'd rather be dead than to become an old man. There is some interesting research that shows a sizeable minority of gay men engage in unprotected, high-risk sexual acts because they'd rather die young than grow old.

Thinking back on my twenties when I lived in San Francisco, I remember walking past the Twin Peaks, a gay bar with huge glass windows that face both Castro and Market Streets. Inside, I'd always notice the older clientele who sat at the bar, drinking the afternoon away. “Wrinkle room” we'd call it as we walked by, hoping upon hope that we would never become that old and alone.

The obsession with looking younger, even when you're clearly not, can be seen in almost any gay neighborhood. A close observer will notice everything from dye jobs to cover up the gray, face lifts to remove the wrinkles, liposuction for the love handles, and chest implants for a more muscled look. Younger means we
are more attractive, and being more attractive means we will still be sexually viable.

There's nothing wrong in wanting to look younger, but when it takes on such an importance in our lives that we are willing to do just about anything to hang on to the illusion of youth, it is symptomatic of a deeper issue. We don't have meaning in our lives without sex. There is no joy in our lives without sex.

The gay man's obsession with youth is almost always linked with his use of sex as a way to control his emotions. He imagines that when he is no longer sexually attractive, he will become overwhelmed by his loneliness and a victim to depression. There will be no way to bring joy into his life anymore. Life will become drudgery and painful.

What he doesn't realize is that gay men who no longer use sex to control their emotions are often relieved to grow older. The pressure to be sexy and out on the town is lifted. He no longer feels compelled to watch every calorie that passes his lips or spend seven hours a week at the gym. Instead, he is free to be himself, without all the cultural expectations that he be something else or that he must, at all costs, remain alluring to other men.

Using other men as a method of emotion regulation requires the gay man to be fundamentally inauthentic. The sexual encounter is all about making him feel something different, and when that is successfully accomplished, he is done with the other man. The encounter is a means to an end that has little to do with a relationship or emotional exchange between two people. It's all about me and making me feel better, and you are
forced to go through the motions, pretending to be interested in the other person long enough to get him naked. At times, you must make idle conversation until sufficient time has passed so that both of you can maintain the illusion that it really isn't just about sex. For instance, you may learn that at times it is more effective toward your goal of having sex if you aren't exactly honest about all the details of your life. You may be even tempted to create a completely fabricated life just for the benefit of bedding the listener (if you have any doubt about this, just visit a gay chat room on the internet).

The authenticity that is sought in stage three is fundamentally inconsistent with the use of sex as an emotion regulation method. In stage three, the gay man must learn other ways than just sex to control his emotions, improve his mood, and to find joy in life.

Sex is not the only process addiction that gay men pursue. For example, some pursue pornography and XXX internet sites. Others use gambling, food, or shopping to regulate their mood.

Sergio is a well-known designer in his mid-sixties. He and his lover of twenty-five years live in a beautifully decorated apartment in San Francisco overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. From the outside, Sergio looks as if he is the model of success, and in many ways, he is. What isn't quite so apparent is that Sergio usually does not have more than a few hundred dollars to his name. He's created a fabulous illusion of wealth by living in an apartment owned by an adoring client who rents to him and his lover for next to nothing. The exquisite furnishings were mostly purchased as add-ons and kickbacks from shop owners who appreciated Sergio directing his clients to their shops, so they passed on a few gifts for him under the table.