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Chapter 4 (continued)
Sexualization (cont.)
Transitional Phase (cont.)
Sexualization of Emotional Needs
Joe Dallas offers the following simple description of the development of homosexual attractions. First, the child has negative perceptions of his relationships to parents and others. Second, the child responds emotionally to his perceptions. Third, emotional needs arise from these responses. And, fourth, the emotional needs become sexualized.4(p92) Dallas adds that at some point the boy realizes his desires are more than emotional. He recognizes sexual feelings. Eventually, he hears about homosexuality and assumes it applies to him.4(p112)
Elizabeth Moberly writes that “it is not surprising that someone who has attained physiological maturity should interpret his or her deepest emotional needs as sexual, but this is to mistake the essential character of these needs.”3(p19) She explains that these are psychological needs that are not filled in childhood and so remain into adulthood where they become confused with physical desires for sexual expression.3(p20) Although the needs come to be expressed through sex, they “exist independently of sexual expression.”3(p10) Dallas explains that the sexualization of these needs occurs when the object of the need (e.g., intimacy with other men) becomes linked with sexual desires. Homosexuality, he says, is “a function through which sexualized emotional needs are fulfilled.”4(p94)
W. Fairbain linked homosexuality to unsatisfying relationships with parents and commented that the “frustration of his desire to be loved and to have his love accepted is the greatest trauma that a child can experience.” This frustration, he writes, drives children to compensate with sexual “substitutive satisfactions.”24(p83) Dallas writes that children commonly idealize their parents. During the normal process of maturing, this idealization gradually gives way to a more realistic view of them. But if some traumatic event or separation causes a boy to be disappointed in his father before he was prepared to let go of the ideal image, he may hold on to the ideal and seek it in other men.4(p103-104) In this same regard, Moberly writes that “the homosexual love-need is essentially a search for parenting.” “The homosexual,” she writes, “seeks . . . the fulfillment of these normal attachments needs, which have abnormally been left unmet in the process of growth.”3(p9)
Joe Dallas suggests that when we reach puberty, if our needs for nurturing from father and peers have not been adequately met, “our bodies won’t wait for our emotions to catch up.” Instead, the emotional needs will get crossed with our strong sexual desires and same-sex love will become the object of a sexualized need.4(p110) Similarly, Nicolosi writes that during the transitional phase, the “affectional hunger” for attention and affirmation from father and other males turns into a “sexual striving.”14(p69)
Dallas believes that “we associate warm, positive feelings with sexual response long before we even know what sex is.” So when one person wants to experience intimacy with another, it might be expected that the desire could be accompanied by sexual feelings.4(p110) Meeting emotional needs in improper ways is not an uncommon human behavior. Many men and women use sex as a way of making themselves feel competent, VIRILE, or special and cared about.4(p109) Of course, sex is not the only thing improperly used in an attempt to fill emotional needs. Drug and alcohol use, over- and under-eating, gambling, working, and even acquiring possessions can be used in attempts to satisfy deep emotional longings.
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VIRILE: “characteristic of an adult man; manly; masculine; male.” Also, “having manly strength or vigor.”16(p2042)