All right. I'm going to do this briefly today. Welcome to Saturday, Gay Men. This is Azure Scott with Wake Up Gay. I'm going to do my podcast from my living room today. So I I wanted to, you know, we've talked a lot about, you know, this concept of shame, the sense of being feeling defective, like there's something wrong with us, and how gay men, you know, typically have a greater portion of this shame than other men do because we grow up in a world where our difference is not celebrated. It's often the point of a lot of contention, a lot of rejection, um, and whatnot. And like I always say on the on these lives on this podcast, that you can ask me questions as we go. I always will attempt to answer them if I see them in the comments below. I will try to answer your question. Um, some of the most interesting conversations we've had is because I've asked this question about people asking questions. So um, but we talked a lot about the whole shame thing and kind of like the debilit some of the debilitating things in gay men, you know, in terms of our interior landscape, right? That, you know, one of the things that I quoted out of a book that I've been looking at recently was this idea that gay men don't believe that they can actually have a truly um, you know, life that is built on, you know, that's that's fun, that's exciting, but that's also, you know, got joy in it, you know, that there's a sadness, if you will, that oftentimes overshadows us a lot as gay men. And part of that sadness, I believe, and I'm gonna read a quote here from this book real briefly here, um, has to do with our our sense of self. Who do we believe we we are? Like, in other words, we we come to have a very poor self-esteem and a very poor sense of self because of shame, because of every a lot of things, you know, all the things that are part of the built-in-the-gay culture. But I've been looking at reading this book, The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs, PhD. And I'm gonna read this one little part and then we're gonna talk about it just briefly. But he's talking about like when we first learned that we were gay, okay? And like how we felt about it. He says, Remember when you first knew you were gay and imagined how your life would be? You probably imagine meeting a handsome fellow, falling madly in love, and living your lives together with a few dogs, or if you were really progressive, even children. Um, you imagine your family would eventually accept your lover as part of the family, and you'd live happily ever after for a lifetime. The gay fantasy, right? Okay, maybe that was just a fantasy, but I'll bet anything that yours was equally rosy. I'll bet anything. Um, I'm sorry, then somewhere along the way your dream died. A lover betrayed you. You couldn't be faithful to one man. Boyfriend after boyfriend proved to be untrustworthy. The men you desire and loved disappointed you. What did you do? You went to the gym, to the bathhouse, to the bars, to the sex club, right? Um, or I haven't been to one of those yet and might want to try it. Or maybe even tried to lose yourself and climbing the corporate ladder. You tried to convince yourself that you weren't unhappy, you were just bored. Any of this sound familiar? Or maybe you just weren't getting enough sex. Or maybe this time, after test driving dozens of models, you find you'll find the right man for you. Who knows? Maybe um Quentin Crisp's dark, tall, dark man was just around the corner, or maybe just in the next bed. But dear Mr. Crisp, he's referring to somebody earlier, Mr. Crisp reports the tall, dark man never comes. What to do? Bury the sadness, right? Deep within yourself and keep moving lest you find yourself suffocating in your own self-pity. So we have this thing of survival in us, and so we we're we're survivors, right? So we go from something and we survive and we build our walls around our heart and we keep on moving. And then he asks these questions Why are my intimate relationships suffocating? I mean, sorry, why are my intimate relationships short-lived? Why am I so driven to have the perfect body? The most beautiful house, the most fabulous career, the youngest and prettiest boyfriend, etc. Why do I fight this nagging depression that tells me that my life is bereft of a greater meaning? Ouch. What all these questions point to is an emotional wound. It is a wound that almost all gay men experience, and if they choose to move their lives forward, they must heal. If you're asking these questions, as I have, and most gay men I encounter, you're struggling with this wound inside yourself too. And he's gonna define it, and we're gonna it's it's it's the shame thing, but he said this wound is trauma that is caused by exposure to overwhelming shame at an early age when we weren't equipped to deal with to cope with it. So I mean, think about the things that happened early on because of the way that we were wired, right? Things that happened as little boys, you know, things that happen when we were shamed for being too sensitive, too feminine, too whatever, right? Um, I mean, you can there's a list of things, or when we got caught, you know, fondling our our cousin, you know, or when we got caught, you know, there's so many things that we get shamed at, or when we got beat up or called, I can't say the word on here, I'll get cut off. Um he says, an emotional wound caused by toxic shame is very serious and a persistent disability that has but the potential to literally destroy my life, your life. It is much more than just a poor self-image. It is the internalized and deeply held belief that you are somehow unacceptable, unlovable, shameful, and in short, flawed. What makes the wound of shame so destructive? To experience such shame, particularly during our childhood and adolescent years, prevents us from developing a strong sense of self. That's it, right? That's that's the that's the core of that right there. So straight boys have a lot of avenues for being affirmed, right? And in our culture and their families and their churches and school, etc. So when you're when you're when you're pervasively experiencing shame, what he's saying here is true. You know, oftentimes my language would be is that a false self emerges. The false self is the one that we prostitute to get love. So we find out what everybody wants us to be. We find out what we're supposed to be. You know, as a gay man, I'm supposed to be super fit, I'm supposed to be very attractive, I'm supposed to be, you know, I've got to be at the gym all the time, I can't be too old, I can't be this, I can't be that. So we have all these things that we try to do to maintain this outward appearance, but also maintain what we think is acceptable for other gay men. I'm gonna read just a little bit more of this. He says, um, a sense of self is the development of a strong identity that is validated by your environment. Well, what if your environment is not validating? What if, like me, you're the kid who in what third grade, the kid rips my necklace off and I burst out crying instead of beating his ass? What if my sensitivity got me shunned by the boys all the time? What if I was a teenager who was bullied into sexual stuff with boys in the neighborhood? What if, you know, there's a lot, there's all these things, right? You guys know the scenarios. What if I was shamed by a family member? What if I was molested by a family member? You know, all of those things produce deep, deep levels of shame in us, and they tell us that there's something wrong with us, that we are defective, that we are not lovable, that we are flawed in a way. And for me, not only was I dealing with the identity stuff and the way that I was wired differently from the other boys, I was also ADHD. And I was ADHD during a time and season in the world where it was largely undiagnosed. So my behavior, my compulsivity, impulsivity got me in trouble in every single grade. I got kicked out of kindergartens. I got kicked out of the in first grade, the principal had to carry me on on his shoulder out of a classroom because I refused to live to live, you know, to leave. And um, you know, I wrote foul words on little girls' arms in kindergarten and got kicked out because I was already sexualized because of sexual abuse. You know, so I grew up with this thing of I'm some there's something so wrong with me, and then this idea that I couldn't control my behavior. Like I it was impulsive and I couldn't control it. And then I became, you know, my I was being raised and you know, for a long time by a single mom, you know, who basically looked at me. And as much as she loved me, she was like, you know, in many ways, she even said this one time, you know, in all of her exasperation, she was like, Why did I have to have a son like you? Like I was so irrevocably flawed and messed up, and I was like the bane of her existence because I was in trouble all the time in school, like all the time, because of my impulsive, you know, behavior being EDHD. Then add to that this thing about how I'm wired, the kid that cries too easy, the kid that doesn't fight, the kid that doesn't play sports, the kid that's being called words that I can't say on here because they'll say I'm doing the hating. Um, you know, the kid that is um learns to be a clown to avoid getting beat up all through school. I had to learn to make people laugh. So, at any rate, I'll read one last part of this and then we'll he says the nerdy teenager develops an identity that includes science genius, right? Because among other things, he joined the science and math club and discovered other teenagers who validated his talent. Same thing for the jocks and headbangers. They develop a sense of self from the validation that they received from hanging out with others who share their values and interests and abilities. Straight boys develop their sense of self by taking out girls on dates. Everyone, including their parents, validated them for their behavior. So, you know, as gay men we have um see what somebody was saying. Right. Okay, I'm making sure somebody wasn't sometimes I have to kick people off. You know, what he's saying here is that validation, legitimate validation, not the validation that we get illegitimately as gay men through our sexual exploits, but basically legitimate validation that comes from family, friends, teachers, etc., all of that, right, is part of what validates the self and ables us to not have this debilitating sense of shame. So he goes on to say, um, hence they came to accept it as part of themselves, straight boys, right? Gay men, on the other hand, rarely had this experience. In a large part, we played the part and took the girls to the prom so that we fit in, all the while knowing it was a farce. Although we received validation for our actions, it was meaningless because we knew at the deepest level that we were play acting. Consequently, we develop a pseudo-self. I've talked about this as a false self, right? Which wasn't a um natural growth of our abilities, desires, and intelligence, right? In other words, the things that should have been called forth in us that were our abilities, that were our talents, that were like we're in this like vacuum where because of how we were wired, we weren't validated for our gifts, we weren't validated for our talents, we weren't validated in many ways for the things that most kids are validated for if as straight boys and girls, right? So we lived in this weird vacuum where, you know, basically where, you know, during those adolescent years, it's that masculine voice, right, that is that really does help sons and daughters separate their identity from their mother. Okay. So in adolescence, the boy is naturally listening, and girls too. They're listening for this masculine voice. This is the time when fathers play a more critical role in the life of their children, it's during adolescence. It's this voice of affirmation that calls us out to be something separate than our mother, something that helps us form our own identity, that secures our identity. I've used this example. If you have the father who has two boys, and one plays football and the other plays the violin, and dad is a football fan, he validates the son who is the football player, goes to all of his games, is there as his biggest cheerleader, validates him as he's the man, he's the boy, he's the tough guy, like he's all the things, you know, daddy's dream wrapped up in a kid, right? But what about the kid that plays the violin? What about the kid that's into the arts? What about the kid that is not like the brother-brother? You know, I don't go to your your um your violin concerts, I don't go to your, what do they call it when they perform? It's called a recital. I don't go to those. I don't know how to validate you. A lot of times in validation, a lot of things have to do with perception, not necessarily intention. Was it dad's intention to not validate me? Not necessarily, but my perception of the lack of validation that I received is the actual thing that takes residence in my heart. So perception is everything. It's not whether or not that parent intended something. They may not have, he might have felt just really lost where you were concerned, right? But his lostness got conveyed. I internalized that law. Or what if the father is absent? Then there's no father present to actually do the validating. And every young man is listening for that masculine voice during those adolescent years because it's part of, like I said, it helps us separate our identity from mom. It helps affirm who we are as a gender male, you know. And then if we don't have the straight boy affirmation because we're not part of the sports league, maybe we're like me, I was grossly uncoordinated because I was a premi baby, had a little frontal lobe issues and all. And so it affected my brain. And so I couldn't do it. I I wasn't, I was terrified of sports, right? So I remember at one point I had a stepbrother for a few years, and my parents put us in baseball in the community league. It was the most terrifying experience for me ever because I was so radically uncoordinated. I had spatial issues, I was clumsy, I was off-kilter, I had all kinds of like issues like that. I remember being put in right field incessantly. And if somebody hit the ball, I would be sitting there terrified that they're gonna hit the ball to the right field. And if they did, I wouldn't be able to catch it. And when I got it, I couldn't throw it in the right direction. My feet ended up in the wrong place, and I threw it over here instead of throwing it here. I ran the bases the wrong direction one time when I got on base because I got walked, not because I hit the ball. So it was traumatic for me to be in that to be in that environment to um like do what the other boys did. So it just increased my shame and my dis am I still like that. That was a good question. Um to a degree. I was, you know, I was the pre the premium baby, you know, frontal lobe issues, so I was grossly incoordinated. And I remember in fourth grade, I had a teacher, he was African American, and he saw something in me like no other teacher ever did for the whole time I was ever in school. And he would send the kids all down the field during recess so he could throw a ball to me from like two feet away. And I can catch it and you know, and feel successful. But I'm I still can be clumsy, I can still be off-kilter, I can still be like I'm the guy that's oblivious, you know. Like if I'm out with the kids or drinking their drinkers or whatever, and we're in a TJ Maxx parking lot, I'm the guy that might be walking in front of you know the cars in the parking lot because I'm totally oblivious, and people are pulling me out of the way. Or on a mission trip to Haiti, they're pulling me out of the street because I'm getting run over by the motors. So I have a degree of that kind of clumsy off-ilteredness now, too. Um it makes me kind of goofy in places as a high school teacher. It made me kind of funny. You know, like you know, self-deprecating humor was the best. So um I want to read this last little part. He says, um, you know, consequently, we developed a pseudo self, and I'm reading from the Elder Range is about overcoming the pain of growing up gay in a straight man's world. Um he says our natural growth abilities, desires, and intelligence. It was a self that would earn it was a self that would earn us validation by others, but our true self remained hidden from everybody because the true self wasn't allowed to emerge, right? So a pseudo or a false self emerged and that became who we were. He says, our core belief that one is unacceptably our core belief that I'm having a reading focus. I don't usually have reading faux paws. I'm a speaker and a writer, this is usually easy for me to do. Um that one is unacceptably flawed and prevented our organic self from developing as it does in an emotionally healthy way. Instead, we became frozen in time, under undeveloped, and somewhat juvenile informed. How we coped was by presenting to the world a self that was explicitly designed to help us get by. Okay, that was the last part I was gonna read of that. So I agree with what he's saying there. It's like what he's what part of what he's saying is that we were grossly underdeveloped because of our lack of validation. And because of the world that we were living in, there was this vacuum that we lived in where we weren't validated for a lot of the things that we were able to do. Like we weren't, we were different. And because our difference was a problem for people, people didn't know what to do with us, right? They didn't know how to validate us because we were a little off. If you will, right? Many of us were. I know that I was off already outside of the gender, you know, affirmation thing or the being secure in my own gender. So the other part of that is we grow up very insecure in our gender, right? So we are we're preoccupied with my body type, with my penis size, with my everything to do with my physicality, right? Because we're overly, we're overly like concerned with and overly almost compulsively, you know, we tear ourselves apart physically. So everywhere that we feel like we miss the mark, right? And all the things that, you know, gay culture values, the irony of what gay culture values is it values the things that it's actually very insecure with. And we're drawn to the things that we actually feel like we don't have within ourselves. You know, why do we like certain types of men? I'm not saying this is everybody. What I'm saying is oftentimes we are trying to complete ourselves in some form of adolescent developmental phase ourselves, and we are estranged from qualities in ourself that we actually seek to integrate through our connection to other people. The problem with that is that if we live in that place of shame and sense of defectiveness, then we're always trying to get something from somebody else to validate us in a place that doesn't really validate because it doesn't have a place to land on the inside of us. Does that make sense? So, like for example, if I'm I'm gonna make a simple example. If I feel like um I'm not a muscular person, I'm not built well, that maybe I'm under-endowed or whatever. What am I gonna seek? What kind of man am I gonna be drawn to? Somebody who's fit, who's toned, who's pretty, who's this, who's that, who's over-endowed, you know, like somebody who, and literally, what are we doing? I'm literally taking in, you know, I've heard it said that like with gay men, we're like cannibals a little bit, right? Cannibals eat others to get their traits, and they get them to assimilate the traits. So my only point in that is, because I'm making fun of us, is when you are estranged from things that you already possess. You know, like I've said before, I could read all day long what the average penis size was, I could read all day long, like I could know from you know validation on apps, I could know from validation in the literature, I could know from certain things, right? But the truth is the only perception that matters is your own. And you can know the truth about your body and that you're actually very normal. You're way, you're in this normal range, like you're not, you're you're you're not deficient per se. Does that make sense? But you it doesn't matter if your self-perception is that you are, then you then you are. Because it's the only perception that matters. It's the only truth that you actually rehearse to yourself over and over again, that, and it's actually a lie, but nonetheless. And because we live in a hypersexualized world, and for gay men it can be like hypersexualized on steroids, pun intended, then it makes it even three times worse. This overcriticalness about every part of our body. You know, it's like so. My point is when we are undervalidated and we and we and we're actually looking to other men because we actually, let's say, for example, let me say it this way: you may be a relatively handsome person, your body is fine, you have everything you need in order to be able to relate sexually to another man, like there's nothing profoundly deficient in your body, okay? But because of our self-perception, we try to connect with men who we think possess the qualities that we're missing. What are we trying to do here? We're actually trying to complete our self. We're drawn to the attributes in another man that we feel are we are deficient in. And we're actually trying to complete our own identity here. We're trying to affirm something that we already have. The problem is when perception is everything, if you have it all and you don't see yourself as having it all, then you don't think you have it all, and you try to consume every person in the planet that you think has something that you're missing. Does that make sense? So, my point is when we act when we are a little bit like cannibals that way, we're trying to take in something that somebody else possesses, literally take it in every hole and orifice we can, right? Praise the Lord. Um again, that's not judging. I'm not judging your sexual taste. I'm not judging our sexual preference, I'm not judging the kind of men we're attracted to. I'm not saying any that is bad or something we should look at ourselves and say, God, what's wrong with you? No, I'm I'm trying to paint a little insight into self-image and about this thing of us trying to complete ourselves. That's why healthy self-acceptance and self-love is so important. There were seasons in my life where I mean, I'm just gonna be transparent. I'm a grower, not a shower. Okay, so I'm the guy that grows a lot but doesn't show a lot, and like that's always the bad thing for the gym. If you're in the gym locker room naked, you want to be the one that grows, I mean that shows, right? You got the one that's all there but doesn't grow a whole lot when it's erect, but at least it's all there for the gym, right? And so I would in those scenarios, I would always feel self-conscious, right? And then I went through a place where I actually was like, you know what? I'm okay. My body is okay. I've got more than what I need. I'm not deficient. I'm actually I'm pretty good on this thing. Like, in other words, I saw myself differently, right? That's why things like going to the gym don't necessarily have to be a bad thing. If they're part of building my self-confidence or having a confidence about my body and my way I'm put together, then it can be a good thing, right? So I went through a season in my life for a good while where I felt okay about myself. I could go to the gym, I could strip down naked, I could go to the shower, I could feel okay, I didn't feel the self-conscious, you know, I could be around other men in contexts where that was the case and I wouldn't feel self-conscious. You know, I could go into the sauna and whatever. Like I felt okay about just being who I was. I felt comfortable in my own skin. Part of what changes that from a lot of men, and then I got into a place where I felt insecure about everything. You know, you start doing all the jelking exercises, you're trying to stretch it, you're trying to do all these things, take all the supplements. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? You do all the things you can to try to make it bigger. And the reason why was because of my overexposure to pornography. Pornography is the hyper-idealized, hyper-sexualized male. Everybody in pornography has got nine inches. You know what I mean? And if you don't have that, you make you pornography does nothing good for the male psyche. Pornography will take a well-hung man and make them feel like they're insecure. Because there's always somebody who's bigger than you, there's always somebody who has more than you, that's thicker than you, that's longer than you, all those things, right? There's always somebody else, right? So you can be a well-put-together man and you look at, and when you see porn, you see this hyper-idealized, everybody's got nine inches, it hangs since six inches, and it's thick, it's weighty, and it's like, you know, you see what I'm saying? I'm being funny, but I'm being real. And so it never does anything good to a man's psyche. Nobody watches porn and walks away from it and thinks, God, I feel really good about myself. No. And so I would go back into these places of feeling insecure again. And now I'm back in a place where I feel more at home in my own skin, etc. And some of that, honestly, I'm just being real. Honestly, some of that came from validation that I received on a lot of the apps, because on the apps, what do we do? We trade all of our pictures of each other first. You know, my joke is that gay men fuck and then they become friends. And so my point is that there is validation that is good. There is validation that is healthy. But when I need the validation to feel okay, and then I am basically always seeking validation and I'm not at home in my own skin, then it becomes a validation that has a futility to it. It's there is a futility that's built in, it marries well with my shame, feeling like I'm defective, right? It marries well with my low self-esteem, my my perception of self, and etc. And when it does that, it just kind of perpetuates this the shame cycle in my life. So healing the wound of shame and healing the wound of failure to accept oneself aren't just nice ideas, they really are things that are essential for us to be able to love others and love ourselves. You know, Jesus said it this way: love your neighbor as yourself. It's the loving of myself that enables me to be free, to be able to love another, but also draw someone to me who is that isn't going to be invalidating to me. If I think that I'm less than, then I will draw people probably that will actually validate that for me. Does that make sense? So, in other words, you manifest what you believe, and then you draw people that will actually affirm what you believe about yourself. So if I wear my insecurity, then I'm going to draw people that are going to affirm my insecurity. That's affirmation in the wrong way. They're gonna be people who belittle me or that don't ever affirm me, that don't ever say anything good about me, that can't say something that's actually, you know, they can't say something about my body that's actually really good. They can't give me affirmation, you know, in that regard. So it's like um you're gonna draw people who aren't going to be able to affirm you in the ways that you actually like to be affirmed. But if I know and believe somewhere in me and I can validate myself and I come into a place of healthy self-acceptance, okay, let me get rid of you. Alright, there we go. Sorry, every now and then I have to get rid of somebody who's just being whatever and then starting. Oh so the question was, you know, why can we not give it to a relationship? We're always on the hunt for the next. And I would say that that's a large question. But I think one part of the answer to that one is it has to do with our interior landscape. You know, how we deal with rejection, how we deal with not feeling secure in ourself, not how well we are able to love ourselves. Also, things like what do I do with intimacy? Is intimate something that intimacy is something that terrifies me? Is it more thrilling when I'm in the chase? Is it more thrilling when I've got the guy and then we're in relationship? And then when the validation stops, I feel like I've got to pull out, or maybe um when things get intimate or emotionally intimate, maybe that gets a little bit frightening for me. But most things about our sustainability and relationship, our ability to be in relationship, because here's the thing: I am made for love. I am built for intimacy, it's part of my design, it's a God-given thing, right? Made in the image of a creator who is love, right? So I'm built for it. I'm I'm built with these longings for love and relationship and connection that don't go away. We were not made to be alone, okay? We weren't made for that. We were built for love. So the question I have to ask myself is if I'm struggling in relationship and I can't commit, or like you're saying, either I can't commit or I struggle with intimacy, or I get bored with this, or you know, when things go a certain direction, I think I freak out and want to pull out, not pun intended, um, you know, et cetera, et cetera, right? Or I become somebody who begins attacking the other person, or maybe I become somebody who tries to destroy it, you know, like I do things to sabotage the relationship, you know, et cetera. All of the things that we do in relationship that actually tear down relationship or make it challenging for us to stay in relationship, they have to do with our interior landscape. Now you might say, well, what if I was I was in a relationship with a guy who treated me poorly, blah, blah, blah. It's still an interior landscape issue. The reason why is it's you manifest what you believe. If you thought you were dog shit, you might draw somebody who will treat you like dog shit and affirm that you are in fact dog shit. Now, that's not true. You're not, but you'll manifest what you believe. So if my core belief is that I am not worthy, that I am unlovable, I am unwantable, I'm not attractive, I'm not these things, then we draw people that actually affirm those negative things in us. The reason all the rest of it has to do with the interior landscape is, and that's part of the reason that I'm all about with this thing, with this podcast, is like, what does it mean for us as gay men to be in a perpetual, constant state of growth, of being fully self-actualized in every arena of our life, including our love life, including our relationship life? What does it mean for us to be able to be not stuck but but but committed to and fully growing as human beings, okay? In our relationships. Well, those things that have to do with relationship are typically um things that have to do with places that we are stuck emotionally or unhealed, right? So let's say, for example, because of my repeated experiences with rejection, right? I get into a relationship, things are going great, it's just one example, and suddenly I begin to do things to sabotage because I see something that remotely looks like the possibility that there might be a problem or I might get rejected. So what do I do? I'm gonna reject you before you reject me. I'm going to sabotage this, right? Or maybe I'm in a relationship where every time, if we're having sex, we're great, but if we're talking and this person starts to talk about loving me or talking about things that are more intimate, or I feel them being intimately like affectionate with me or close to me in that way, or whatever, that you know, they're able to communicate. Maybe they have a high EQ and they communicate well and they articulate things well that make me uncomfortable. Well, then I have to ask myself the question: what is it about their very present nature and their ability to love that way that makes me uncomfortable? So typically, you know, there are three barriers to personal wholeness. This is a broad brush, failure to forgive others, failure to forgive self, and failure to accept oneself. In those three arenas lie most of the issues that are keep us relationally stuck, are relationally in places that don't bring the kind of fruit in the relationship that we actually desire. So, how do I what do I do with that? You know, part of that is I have to begin to ask myself a lot of questions. Okay, why do you feel the need to sabotage the relationship? Why do you make those sarcastic comments? Why do you do things to like rub this person the wrong way when you guys just start getting close? Well, I'm afraid that if he sees who I really am, he's not gonna continue to like me. Or if he sees something else, he's always gonna be tempted by something else because I'm not enough. Or why don't you think you're enough? Because I don't feel really good about my body. Well, why don't you feel good about your body? I feel you know inadequate. I feel whatever. Well, why do you feel inadequate? Because that's what I was always told as a kid. I had brothers who ridiculed me, I had whatever, whatever. Well, what did that do to you? It made me feel like there was something wrong with me. Bingo, shame. I was defective. Something wasn't, which makes me okay, what does shame say to you? What is that feeling of being defective and not feeling like you were adequate do to you? It made me feel like I wasn't lovable, I wasn't wantable, and that I didn't matter. Boom! Now you're on core belief. When you get down to that level, you're looking at what do I really believe about myself. Now, when I get to the place where I realize this is what I believe, like one of my core beliefs, because my father, biological, walked out when I was five. I wrote about it in one of my books. There was a scene, there was a picture that I drew. And it was a time when my my biological, my my stepdad who adopted me, who was frustrated with my bad behavior. We were driving, and you know, normal drive, you know, this is but this is the way he functioned. We like to go for drive and talk. And basically, he asked me the question what's the single most significant event in your life that was the most painful? And I immediately blurted out when my dad walked out on me when I was five years old. And we both sat there kind of dumbfounded because of the level of truth that was there. It was a wound that he couldn't heal as the stepdad who adopted me. Well, how can he heal a wound of abandonment in his son's heart? Right. But it was also a reality and a revelation that gave insight into a lot of my behavior. Like, so when I got down, and then I said, and in the part when I wrote it, I said, the thing that I didn't that he never asked, but if he had asked this question, what did that wound tell you, or what did it do in your heart? And I said, and when I wrote this, I said, it told me that I didn't matter. So what did I come to believe about myself by a biological that walked out when I was five? I came to believe that I didn't matter. That's a core belief. Okay, that there is a core belief. That's it as an unhealed core belief. Think about what happens when I carry that into relationship. If I don't matter, then when you return my text, you don't like me. If I don't matter, if you're not chasing me, I'm not valuable. If I don't matter, Then you're probably looking for a reason in my mind to break up with me. If I don't matter, and I don't do everything right in this relationship, and I don't make sure that you're always okay and make sure everything is always okay. If I don't matter, then if I don't do what's right, you're gonna reject me. If I don't matter, if I'm not enough for you, sec me. If I don't matter, you see how you can go on? If I don't matter becomes the underlying belief behind a lot of my behavior. All behavior has a goal. So I have to ask myself, what is the goal of my behavior? If I'm sabotaging and I'm saying smart, sarcastic things to you because we're getting close and I'm trying and I'm trying to hurt you, what is the goal of that behavior? Well, I'm terrified that I'm gonna be rejected and hurt. So I'm testing you. I'm throwing things out there to hurt you because I want you, I want to have the opportunity to reject you before you reject me because I'm trying to avoid the pain of being rejected. If I do this, so you can always ask yourself the question, you know, if whatever behavior is that I'm doing, you know, usually it's it has to do with manipulative behaviors. Like I'll give you another example that has nothing to do with being gay. Okay. When my mother-in-law came to live with us after my father-in-law died, she would be in a mood in the room. And in the mood would permeate the room. Very self-indulgent, selfish mood. And you can see that she was sitting in her recliner in a mood, and my wife and I would be sitting there like, what the fuck is wrong with her? Right? But we were we were gracious because we wanted to be. And so what we would start asking her, what's going on, mom? What's wrong? Well, you know, da da da da da da da da da da. So the behavior, the mood, was designed to elicit a response in us to ask her how she's doing, to probe her because she didn't want to talk about it. So, in other words, I can't talk, I can't just come into the room and say, I'm feeling this. I'm feeling neglected. I'm feeling like you guys are spending a lot of time outside the house and I'm left here alone, and I feel like it's because you don't want to take me with you, and therefore you don't love me. Because I can't say that, for whatever reason, because I don't want to be rejected if I say that, or whatever my reasoning is, right? I come into the room and I do a mood. And you're supposed to interpret my mood and ask me questions. And so we finally got to the point where, like, mom, why don't you just be a little bit more honest and authentic with this one? And instead of doing the mood, why don't you just talk to us about what's going on? You know, at dinner time, you could bring up, you know, I'm starting to feel like um like you guys don't like being around me, and um, you know, I don't feel like I matter much to you. You guys have been on three dates this week, and you left me behind, and I just felt like I wanted to have some time with you too, and whatever, whatever. Then we can deal with that. Okay. So to answer that question that we started to answer, and then I'll wrap it here. If I'm struggling in relationship, it's interior landscape material. It's this interior. Okay. So there's something in me that needs to move or be healed. And that something usually is going to, most likely for gay men, is going to revolve around issues of shame, issues of self-perception, forgiving myself, letting myself off the hook for, you know, you're still holding yourself on account because you quit your job last month because your boss got mad at you, or you're still holding yourself on the hook because you fucked up a relationship and now you wish you still had that relationship, or you're still holding yourself on the hook for what you think you did. Well, then forgive yourself. Let yourself off the hook. And if you can't, then you have to ask that question again. My behavior. What is what goal is my not forgiving myself serving? Well, if I forgive myself, I have to trust again. If I forgive myself, I have to take a chance. If I forgive myself, I might get, I might get hurt. Or if I forgive myself and I let go of the shame of making a mistake, then how do I keep from making another mistake? In other words, I'm using my shame as a weapon against myself to either hem me in or to ensure a future result. Wrong motivation, right? In other words, or I'm don't forgive myself because I feel better when I'm being punished. Hmm, that's a good one. Why do you feel better when you're being punished? Because when I'm being punished, whether I'm punishing myself or being punished by another, it I feel better about when I'm being punished because I actually agree with the punishment. Oh really? I agree that bad kids are punished. And when I'm punished, it makes me feel like the bad kid, and that's what I believe about myself is that I'm a bad kid. So what happens if you're not punished? Then I have to be able to look at the idea that maybe I'm not always a bad kid. If I'm not a bad kid, maybe somebody really can love me. Oh. Then what's the problem with that? Because I have to hope again. And I've shut down hope. I got tired of hoping. Because why'd you get tired of hoping? Do you see how asking the question? I could ask myself these questions because I experienced so many fucking disappointments that I got burnt that I didn't want to put my heart out there and be vulnerable again. Okay. What happens if you put your heart out there again? They may hurt me. And here's the thing: you'll never experience love again unless you put your heart out there. So then you have a choice to make. Do I want to take a risk for love and for being loved? Or do I want to stay in a place of being miserable? If I choose the latter, then I just have to know that's what I'm choosing. Not because everybody else is bad, but because I'm actually choosing it because I don't want to get hurt. Well, men are just a blah-buh-buh-buh-buh. Really? Every man out there, every single man on the planet is just a piece of shit waiting to try to hurt you. Well, that sounds like a victim. Why do you have an investment in being a victim? Because I don't believe the world is good. Why don't you believe the world is good? Because I've had a hundred million disappointments that told me that. Okay. What's that doing for you? Well, it keeps me in a place where I feel safe because I don't have to trust anything. I don't have to take a chance. Okay? What's that doing for you on finding love? Well, it shuts it down. Okay then. If you're choosing to shut it down, why are you choosing to shut it down? Because I don't think I can ever have it. Because I'm afraid of getting rejected. Because I don't think I'm worth it. Because I tend to agree with the fact that I'm bad. You know, whatever it is. But see, my my point is that every behavior has a goal. So we keep asking the question until we get to the core belief. When you get to the core belief, you have an option. Either forgiving myself if it involves something that I just have not been able to let go of. Or, okay, what does it mean for you to let go of your self-contempt and actually say, I love myself? If I love myself, I might want to love. If I love myself, I might see that I have value. If I love myself, I might see that I'm actually lovable. If I love myself, I might see that I'm lovable and that I can be loved by another person, even if my experience has told me so far that I haven't found somebody that can actually do that. But if I love myself, it means I may have to hope that there is opportunity for being loved again. If you never take the risk to open yourself up again to love, you'll never experience love. The problem with that is, is you're made for love and you're made for intimacy. So what does that mean for you? It means you're miserable as fucking hell. And we all have to make a choice about what we want to do with that. You can stay miserable and never take the risk of loving. You can forgive yourself for past failures with love or ways that you've blamed yourself for love going wrong, and just let yourself off the damn hook, right? You can accept yourself and say, I am actually lovable, and there are things in me that that would really make another man happy, that would really be something that would bless another man. I'm not all that bad, but I've had an investment in making myself bad because that's how I feel like I get treated. Well, and here's the thing: when your interior landscape changes, you will manifest something different and you will draw something different. So there's no getting around this thing of self-acceptance and loving oneself. You will not manifest anything different until you do. Now, if there's abuse or other things that are tied to that lack of self-worth, or that lack of self-love, or that failure to accept or inability to accept oneself, then deal with that. It might be you need to forgive somebody, which is ultimately about forgiving ourselves. I despise you, but I really despise you because you weren't capable of loving me. So what is oftentimes other-centered contempt is really self-contempt. I despise you because you weren't capable of loving me. So who do I really despise? I despise me because I wasn't enough for you to love. Either way you look at it, forgiving them, forgiving me are both the answers to that. So my my greater point in everything is that the interior landscape will dictate our ability to be able to love ourselves rightly, accept ourselves rightly, and love others well. And the growth that we want to experience in our relational wholeness and our relational success, our relational engagement that we actually long for, that the per that that is the context for our intimacy and experiencing intimacy and experiencing love because I'm made for love is something that can be healed. We are always evolving, we are always changing, we are always being healed, present, continuous. All we have to do is choose certain things that make us uncomfortable. But through the discomfort and through choosing that path and embracing the thing that makes you so uncomfortable, there is liberty and life on the other end of that for you and for me. So I'll leave it there. Blessing gaze. I love you guys, and I hope this is helpful. I love our interaction, love the DMs. You can talk to me outside of this, and that is all wonderful, too. Until tomorrow.