How Self-Attraction Led Me to Friendship with My Body

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

– Psalm 139:14a (ESV)

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.

Without going into the icky details, I experience self-attraction, also known as autosexuality. I am attracted to certain guys — and when I feel (or even think of) my body tilting toward how those guys look, I find that I’m attracted to myself, too. When that has happened, I have felt a sudden, “Wow, I like that,” coupled with a longing for more of that as part of me. However, in the past, I’ve shut down these feelings by a crippling fear amid the attraction — “I’m not supposed to like that.”

A static body became my modus operandi when I pressed down these attractions. Like bouncing my gaze in purity culture, just maybe if I kept my body still enough, or far enough away from my type, I wouldn’t be tempted by it.

But inevitably, time changes us. Metabolisms shift, surgeries scar, and before you know it, the person looking back at you in the mirror may look a lot different, and who knows how attractive they’ll be!

So then as I entered my thirties, I had to come to terms with my body.

I was learning to venerate the image of God in my brother. I could begin to hold his hand as a friend. How now could I hold my own hand and bless the body God has given me without suppressing it or idolizing it?

Maybe I could start to see what this new friend was like. Without burying down this self-attraction, perhaps I could acknowledge where I found my body beautiful before God. What I valued in how He created me. I needed to find a way of acknowledging what I was seeing, and praying, “May it be blessed.”

As the psalmist above considers, God has fearfully and wonderfully created me, and as such, I ought to acknowledge what I see and thank him for it.

Beyond this blessing, friendships grow with time. Keeping my body static couldn’t hold on much longer, so I needed to learn how to grow in communion with it as it changed.

Should I change my body, so it seemed ugly to me?

While humbling, such a thought steered me away from the beautiful. I’d known the static so long that to make it uglier, intentionally, seemed quite uncharitable to a nascent friendship.

Maybe I actually wanted to make myself attractive like those other guys?

I confess, that thought has put the goofiest smile on my face. However, such a desire felt not only self-serving, but baked in pride. Plus, I doubt that any changes I could make would ever quite be enough. If anything, it would likely increase any level of body dysmorphia already playing into this whole experience.

It seemed like a different perspective outside of attraction was needed. As Christians, we are called to “present [our] bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is [our] reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). How could I start to change my body in a pattern of service?

I suppose I could start at the most local level. I am a father and husband. I needed to let my body change a little to make sure I could take care of my family. We are called to be stewards of creation, so I needed to give my body the strength and fuel it needed to care for it and my family well. Not letting it be a hyperfocus, but letting it shift as it received care — and also was inevitably thwacked in the face by my children and their weapons of choice.

Maybe some of those bodily changes will be attractive to me, maybe some won't. But regardless, “May it be blessed.”

Even with this stewardship, I recognized that “bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things” (1 Timothy 4:8). Keeping my body in its proper place, God willing, might keep my friendship with it grounded in Christ. To me, that looks like standing at attention during prayer, prostrating in humility, getting up again after each fall, and knowing Christ’s body in communion and in the love of my brothers and sisters in Christ.

At last, in the midst of all this processing, I needed to learn to rest with this friend. Be content with all the changes he undergoes. Even when he remains still at times, I can recognize that some seasons may be meant for quiet.

I confess, I’m still learning how to get along with this pal. He’s definitely changed more in the last couple years than he has in the decade prior, but that has caused me to get to know him much more than I ever thought I could. I won’t say how attractive he is to me right now, but I will say this: his friendship is a blessing to me.

Have you experienced self-attraction or autosexuality? How have you learned to befriend your body in your experience of sexuality? What patterns of spiritual formation have been helpful in orienting your body to Christ?