While I have happily chosen to be celibate, I am also currently abstinent in terms of my relationship with Christ. It’s not like any spiritual depth or intimacy is absent there, but the “divine romance,” as Phil Wickham puts it, is lacking. I don’t mind “kissing,” if you will, though beyond spiritual flirtation, I feel utterly helpless, unable to grow in my intimacy with the Lord.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s a commandment that sounds simple but cuts so deep. For decades, I wrestled with it — not because I didn’t want to love my neighbor; for the most part, that was easy, especially after becoming a Christian. The problem was loving myself. If I’m honest, I still struggle with the second part of this commandment.

Frankly, my testimony of same-sex attraction doesn’t include any sexual relations with another man. The “plainness” of my testimony is sometimes frustrating. What I’m honestly looking for in such vulnerable moments is a friend who will walk with me day by day as I strive to follow Jesus in my broken sexuality. In a sense, it’s not too complicated — but far too ordinary for many people. 

I remember feeling proud about my height but embarrassed about my weird, beanpole-like body on numerous occasions. It was like I hadn’t gained a single pound since I was a toddler as someone kept stretching out my limbs more and more. I often found myself wishing I could be strong and attractive and well-proportioned like some of my peers.

I wouldn’t say I have a close relationship with my dad. He could cut to the quick when scolding us, and I pulled back from my dad because I never wanted to bear the brunt of that; he seemed to have sensed that, and similarly pulled back from me. It may seem my dad is an ogre. But he’s a man, fallen like us all, and if I listed each of my own faults into one distilled paragraph, I would look just as terrible.

Father’s Day is a challenging holiday for me. There’s a stereotype among men who are sexually attracted to other men that most of us have “daddy issues.” Sadly, I’m not an exception. My dad may have been technically present, but he was emotionally and spiritually absent.

Admittedly, I am only two weeks into my new bearded life. Fear not, this post isn’t the equivalent of someone getting married and writing a “Why Marriage is a Struggle and Why I’m Great at It” how-to guide. I have no tips on growing or maintaining facial hair. But I have had some complex feelings around growing a beard and what that says about my masculinity.

I waited until my late thirties to “come out” to my parents. I swore for years that I would never do it, but I finally caved. Eventually, all the filtering, editing, and compartmentalizing just grew exhausting. As difficult as it was, I knew that the time to come out to them had come. I decided to write them in lieu of a conversation. 

For decades I couldn’t even admit to myself that I was gay. I thought I was bisexual, at best, because I’d had sex with five women in my teens and early twenties. Honestly, I still can’t believe I ever did that. I was so determined to be straight that I thought having sex with women would make that a reality for me. It didn’t.

I met a dear friend at summer camp. Both of us have struggled with loneliness and despair. Neither of us was very strong or “masculine” growing up. We both took our religious faith seriously. In our adult lives, we both went to seminary. And we both like poetry. And today, whenever I struggle with stuff, his words comfort and encourage me to keep going.

We often speak of friendships in processing our attractions toward guys. How to reclaim brotherly bonds amid tides of crushes. How we learn to venerate the image of God in men, letting our attractions capture beauty without claiming it as our own. But it gets all the more complicated when one of the guys to whom you’re attracted is yourself.

I remember being particularly excited about the fact that he wasn’t just coming over for a bit — he came to stay the night! We would be able to spend so much time together, and I couldn’t imagine any version of that scenario that wouldn’t appeal to me. That is until, of course, something went wrong.

As I consider my history with broken New Year’s resolutions, I notice that they almost always fall into the three categories of faith, sexuality, and masculinity. This is true of resolutions I made many years ago, even before I heard of YOB and was simply trying to organize my life goals as best I knew in such a way that honored Jesus.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it might look like to share my last days with another man. Sharing my life with him in a way that’s pure, platonic, and rooted in Christ — a lifelong companionship without crossing lines that my faith tells me are off-limits. This same-sex longing didn’t come out of nowhere. It started building a couple years ago, around another lonely Valentine’s Day.

When I decided to commit myself to celibacy as a gay Christian, one prayer became the focus of my personal prayer life. Not having a boyfriend or a husband? That was difficult, but it didn’t cut to the heart of how I envisaged my life. But not having children? That was the real thorn in my flesh.

As I entered adulthood, I faced pressure from my dad to get hitched. My parents thought that I “used to” struggle with same-sex attraction after a most complicated religious experience. I could likely write an entire post on that experience alone, but to put it succinctly: I encountered grace in such a way that made me know and love God more and caused lust to lie low for years.

For years, I was caught in a strange paradox. I was drawn to gay men — compelled to be around them in clubs, bars, and cruising spots where I knew I’d find a connection, even if it was fleeting; yet I also harbored a deep dislike for the men I met and even the ones I saw on screen. I was, in a way, anti-gay — primarily from the way I was raised.

Even if you did acknowledge a girl’s heart, it felt as though you also had to plot hotness and holiness on a grid, determining the benefits and pitfalls of dating a woman at, say, a “7 hotness, 6 holiness.” I suppose you could find this plotting helpful if your hotness detector is somewhere south of a Kinsey 6, but what should you do if it’s not and you want to get married by some act of God?

A common theme I’ve noticed in male Side B spaces is that of the mythical “straight best friend.” Namely, that if we could only find a straight man who was the right mix of masculine, sensitive, and cuddly, we would be cured. Cured of what? Childhood traumas, daddy issues, feeling like an outsider, lack of masculinity, or even same-sex attraction itself?

The other day, while digging through some years-ago writings, I came across a letter I wrote in 2012. It was raw and honest, meant for a guy I’d had a crush on for two years. Reading it again, I felt nostalgia – not for him, but for the version of myself who poured his heart onto that page.