Kindle Notes & Highlights
A sexual identity includes all of the thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and emotions that cause a person to become sexually excited.
Bisexual men live in terrible isolation. The gay community doesn’t accept them. Gay men commonly assume a bisexual man is a gay man coming out. Straight people often assume the same. Yet, a man with a bisexual identity needs to be affirmed by his peer group just as much as gay men do. Most wives are understandably not comfortable allowing a bisexual husband to have “sex
I see often: A bi man lives out a period of “bi adolescence” and then can choose to be faithful to one partner. However, other bi men who want to be
The issue of identity is pivotal here, because the options and outcomes change enormously for mixed-orientation marriages with a gay husband.
Affirmation of identity” is “mirroring of who a person is at his or her core” by people who have the same core.
“homosocialize.” He needs to feel his gayness mirrored in a community of other men who will help him express it, joke about it, talk about it, have brotherhood around it. It’s like what every straight boy wants
when he’s going through his peer-group stage: “We’re a bunch of guys and we feed each other’s masculine souls by sharing how much we’re into girls.”
Gay boys need the same thing but often lose that opportunity when they are children; consequently, they often feel overwhelmed by isolation and depre...
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loner can receive the affirmation of his peer group indirectly, through articles in the newspaper, magazines, and online; in books, movies, and TV shows; and, yes, in
pornography. From these, he can sense that he is recognized as a brother, as a member of the family, as one of the good guys.
Identity has biological and sociological roots, not always clearly distinguished. Siblings
Identity includes some sort of mysterious cellular awareness. Much has been written on this topic. We are merely reminding ourselves here of some of its elements.
The Bisexual Option.[3] Sexual pursuits not
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grounded in identity do not carry the core of need of sexual pursuits grounded in identity.
This need seems to be especially intense if an individual’s ability to express his or her identity ...
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least acknowledged in some period of late adolescence—may carry less life-or-death intensity. It’s been sat...
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Identity can’t be changed by therapy.
Although identity can’t be modified by therapy, other issues often can be. For example, therapy can be a powerful tool in reducing the force of compulsions driven by childhood abuse or neglect.
person’s behavior is much more adaptable than his core sexual scripts, which are often as fixed as identity.
1. Laurie Essig, “Heteroflexibility,” Salon.com, www.salon.com/2000/11/15/heteroflexibility/, posted November 15, 2000, accessed January 29, 2014. 2. Alfred Charles Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (New York: W. B. Saunders, 1948).
Fritz Klein, The Bisexual Option (Philadelphia: The Haworth Press, 1993).
Kinks such as these are very strong; and the more a person fights them, the stronger they become. The best way to deal with them is to accept and manage the acting out. The compulsion can diminish with
acceptance and shame reduction, but the impulse will most likely not go away completely, even after therapy.
What turns you on is a strong signifier of who you are and what you’ve experienced.
what turns you on does not determine your sexual identity in any simpleminded way.
Your preference in porn doesn’t define your sexual orientation.
kinks are often associated with compulsive sexual behavior. The kinkster is wasting too much time and money on the kink, he wants to stop but can’t, and he is harming himself or others.
this case, strong measures must be taken to free the kinkster of his compulsion, and sometimes permanent abstinence is the only way to recover control over his life. In other cases, I’ve treated kinksters who could indulge in their kinks in a controlled way after treatment and manage their lives with this outlet. Both situations arise; no hard-and-fast rule exists about how kinks must be managed.
Research shows that kinks are often permanently embedded in the client’s core sexual scripts and cannot be “eliminated.” What is possible is to add to someone’s sexual fantasies and behaviors so they are not so dependent on the kink for arousal.
What we look for to diagnose sexual addiction is that the kinkster’s behavior should be strongly interfering with his or her ability to connect with people and form relationships; it should also be getting in the way of employment or school or other tasks of daily living. A
For more on sexual addiction, see the website of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, www.sash.net.
DSM-5, defines a paraphilia as an “atypical sexual practice.”
“paraphilic disorder” as a paraphilia that includes distress or impairment in functioning, or that inherently involves non-consenting individuals. A
professionals when a paraphilia should be classified as a paraphilic disorder. The practical distinction is the amount of impairment the person with the paraphilia is experiencing in his or her life because of the paraphilia, or the amount of harm he or she is causing others because of it, rather than the nature of the paraphilia itself.
Jack Morin, The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Sexual Passion and Fulfillment (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996). 2. Ogi Ogas
www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/guide/paraphilias-overview. This post provides a good overview of paraphilias (kinks).
to claim his identity
Both straight and gay communities put enormous pressure on the man and woman in a mixed-orientation marriage, and few marriages can stand up under this social, family, and religious pressure.
Something deep in the human psyche wants to proclaim allegiance to its group, to claim pride and membership with kindred people.
This suppression of an important part of who you are may push you toward depression, bitterness, or other forms of lonely grief, both as a couple and as individuals.”
Dossie Easton, The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures (Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts, 2009). 6. Tristan Taormino, Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2008).
Fritz Klein, The Bisexual Option (Philadelphia: The Haworth Press, 1993). 8.
Martin S. Weinberg, Colin J. Williams, and Douglas W. Pryor, Dual Attraction: Understanding Bisexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 9. Benoit Denizet-Lewis, “The Scientific Quest to Prove—Once and for All—That Someone Can Be Truly Attracted to Both a Man and a Woman: Bisexuality Comes Out of the Closet,” New York Times Magazine, March 2...
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The point is to request boundaries on behavior, not on what’s going on in a person’s head.
It is not necessary to invalidate your partner’s reality for you to be heard.
mostly heterosexual man differs from a heteroflexible man in that the latter is only circumstantially involved with men, whereas the mostly heterosexual man has a definite lifetime sexual interest in
men, even if slight, independent of opportunity or circumstance.
1. Ronald F. Levant and Gini Kopecky, Masculinity Reconstructed: Changing the Rules of Manhood—at Work, in Relationships and in Family Life (New York: Dutton, 1995), 9.
Ritch C. Savin-Williams and
Zhana Vrangalova, “Mostly Heterosexual as a Distinct Sexual Orientation Group: A Systematic Review of the Empirical Evidence,” Developmental Review 33 (2013): 58–88.
