Answer: We certainly understand. Before we found real change, every one of us went through long, frustrating periods where we felt entrapped in behaviors and feelings we felt were beyond our control. Most of us hoped desperately for change but doubted that we would ever find it.

So if you feel like you're tried everything but nothing's worked, we have to ask, have you tried the approach we've outlined on this web site?

Our page called "Solutions: What Worked for Us" outlines six closely interwoven areas of growth that most of us found we had to address in order to experience significant change:

• Self acceptance; coming out of shame and isolation;
  
  
• Turning our lives and will over to God;
  
  
• Finding brotherly love and masculine affirmation with heterosexual men;
  
  
• Resolving underlying emotional problems; facing and healing buried pain;
  
  
• Surrendering obsessions, envy and lust; and
  
  
• Fully embracing heterosexual masculinity and a whole new identity.

In hindsight, we can see two major traps we often fell into before we found real, lasting change. One was to put all of our efforts into one or two areas of healing alone (typically, a heavy spiritual or behavioral emphasis) while neglecting or being unaware of the other areas where the roots of the problems lay. The other major trap was to work on the right areas of healing but to take the wrong approach -- trying to "pray away" our homosexual feelings, for instance, or trying to force change through white-knuckled resistence, or trying to motivate ourselves by guilt or shame.

We also found that significant change was often blocked as long as we kept any of the following obstacles in our paths:

• Ambivalence about truly changing.
  
  
• Skepticism about whether change was really possible, or not knowing how to pursue change. Some of us once preferred to believe that we were "born this way" and couldn't change, because that would "let us off the hook."
  
  
• Unwillingness to get out of our comfort zones, to do anything different, or to come out of hiding to get the help we needed.
  
  
• Giving ourselves LESS of what we truly needed -- authentic and meaningful male companionship and affirmation -- instead of MORE.
  
  
• Trying to force change through willpower.
  
  
• Trying to resolve relationship problems (our relationships with other heterosexual men, particularly our perception of self in relationship with other men) in isolation, OUTSIDE of any meaningful relationships.
  
  
• Expecting God to do all the work, without our having to do much more than pray for change (or at least anything that seemed too difficult).
  
  
• Failing to understand that change was a journey. We once expected God to change us in an instant instead of following him on a healing journey that would take a lot of time and energy.

A reparative therapist in private practice, writes:

"In general, I believe success in this (or any) therapy process can be attributed to a single, simple principle: people spontaneously change for the better when they let go of their resistance to change. In other words, to change is natural if we can just get out of the way and let it happen. Of course, the problem with this is that men dealing with homosexuality typically have so much in the way that unblocking the natural change process can be like removing the Hoover Dam." (See: "Who Succeeds at Change in Therapy?")

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