Jason Maxwell
“Same-sex abuse distorted my thoughts and perceptions, twisting my desires.”
I was a momma’s boy growing up. I had two older brothers who were inseparable, and I was excluded from their close bond. Because I was much younger, I often felt weak in comparison and unwelcome in their activities. Consequently, I ran to my mother for safety and connection. My dad worked a lot, and when he was home, he spent more time with my older brothers, so our connection wasn’t securely established. As a result, I began feeling like I didn’t fit in as a male, and I began bonding better with females.
As a young boy, I remember an experience in the bathtub when I got soap in my eyes. As my mom rushed to respond to my cries, my dad pushed her out of the way. He grabbed me and shook me, telling me to calm down. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. As my brothers looked on, my father restrained me from going to my mother for consolation. At that moment, I decided I wanted nothing to do with my dad. I will not be like him, I thought. That experience, along with the poor relationship I had with my older brothers, shaped how I viewed other males: aggressive, unsafe, and not to be imitated.
Sadly, my mind was opened to sexuality, further distorting my view of love and connection with boys and men when I was sexually abused between the ages of 6 and 8. At this point, I started experiencing same-sex attraction and even began to feel accepted and loved by the boy who was perpetrating the abuse. I remember frequent dreams and nightmares in which people of both sexes were either seeking out sexual opportunities with me, or I with them. To complicate matters, around second or third grade, I was exposed to Playboy magazine.
Of all my childhood experiences, however, the most traumatic happened at school. I remember trying to persuade two friends to touch me and let me touch them sexually. This was one of the only ways I felt I could relate to other boys. One of the boys told his parents, which led to the police showing up at school. Pulled out of class, I was interrogated for hours without my parents. I was forced to talk about things I didn’t want to share with people I didn’t know, and this troubling experience was humiliating. I was afraid my sharing would get my abuser and my parents in trouble. After being in police custody all day at school, I was taken to the station before being returned home that evening.
After that event, I kept my feelings bottled up until age 16 when I was sexually abused once again by a friend’s father. Torn between feeling disgusted and feeling pleasure at the hands of someone else, I found myself powerless to say no even though I found him unattractive and undesirable. Guilt and shame engulfed me as I wondered how my friend would feel if she knew her dad was acting out in this way.
After going away to college, I ultimately entered the gay community and lived a gay lifestyle for 13 years. At that point, a life-changing encounter with God exposed how my childhood experiences had shaped my identity. Looking back, I now understand how same-sex abuse shaped my thoughts and perceptions, distorting my desires.
Married for almost 11 years, my wife Sarah and I now have three amazing daughters. I no longer struggle with same-sex attraction and have freedom from the fear and rejection that were festering in my life. I don’t feel I have something to prove to be a man. Working through my early childhood trauma has produced an exceedingly abundant life full of joy, peace, and love.