"If a homosexual man should set out to become heterosexual, among all that is obscure, it is clear he should discontinue homosexual relations, however tempted he may be to continue.
He would be well advised in reaching for such a goal to anticipate that success, if it be achieved at all, will require a long time, years not months, that the effort will be painful and humiliating, that he will discover profound currents of feeling which oppose the behavior he now requires of himself, that emerging obstacles will each one seem insuperable yet each must be thought through, that further insight will be constantly required to inform and sustain his behavior, that sometimes insight will precede and illumine action, and sometimes blind dogged action must come first.
There is no short cut, no safe-conduct, no easier way. He must proceed alone, on nerve. He is not entitled to much hope - just that he has a chance. He may take some comfort in knowing that NO ONE CAN BE SURE AT THE OUTSET THAT HE WILL FAIL, and that it is his own measurable resources of heart and mind which will have most bearing on the eventual outcome.
This is a self-transcendent process of changed that originates in one's heart and expands outward, always within the purview and direction of a knowing consciousness, begins with a vision of freedom, with an 'I want to become...', with a sense of the potentiality.
Sometimes this process of change may proceed with an increasing momentum and finality to solid completion.
That person gains most from therapy, and gains it most quickly, who has the heart and will to go it alone in the event that therapy does not help; whereas he who clings to therapy as a drowning man to a ship's timber is likely to burden therapy with a weight it can't support and so take himself and therapy down together."
- Allen Wheelis, 1958
Note: There are a few areas where I would Correct his statement. The journey is anything but "humiliating." Release of SHAME has been the central focus of every successful journey out of homosexuality that I have witnessed. Also, the statement "he is not entitled to success" is somewhat inaccurate. I guess it depends on the definition of "success." For me, it isn't necessarily the elimination of all Same-Sex Attraction, but the replacement of it with my healthy relationships and a much stronger sense of my own God-given masculinity and secure sense of manhood.
Pax Christi,
Jeremy
