Why Sexuality Untangled Began & Who Created it?

Love Always Wins

We live in a world that constantly tries to place us in stereotypical boxes as we grow and navigate through life. I started this blog because I am not the stereotypical person you would find talking about sexuality and gender. Mostly because I spent over 20 years in the closet, being a very masculine bi man in an environment where I already knew what the people around me thought about people like me.

I am a 6'3", 275-pound former college football player from the country. I grew up back in the woods of the Colorado Rockies, hunting and riding four-wheelers all sorts of country boy shit. I love being a country boy, but sadly, the more rural you get, the more ignorance you find. I have been bi my entire life but wasn't sure how to navigate the gay side of myself, so I didn't. I was sexually abused as a 6-year-old child until I was 9 years old. This experience messed me up in more ways than I can explain. Over time, in this community, I will do my best to take you on that journey through my mind, how I crawled out, and what it did to me.

I don't have some fancy educational background that makes me an academic expert on any subject, although I do have a bachelor's degree in Sociology. What makes me qualified to speak about these topics are my experiences in life. I’ve been navigating complex sexual emotions since I was 6 years old. I navigated them for over 20 years alone. In the past 5 years, I have seen countless psychologists, therapists, and neuropsychologists. I’ve had every psychological evaluation that can be done. What I have realized is I can speak on complex sexual emotions better than most people who have spent decades of their life in it. I have found lots of great professionals to help me on this journey, but not before I found so many who don't deserve the license they carry.

I am truly grateful for the people I have found that have helped me untangle myself. You see, people don't understand that being bi is like being straight and gay. Going through what I did and in the environment I did, it was easy to just lean into the straight side of me. This means I spent over 25 years not knowing half of me or how to love and cherish every part of myself.

I grew up in an Evangelical Christian family. My dad was a pastor for 15 years, and both of my grandfathers have spent their lives as pastors. I learned growing up to believe being gay was a sin, a weakness, and flamboyant—so many things that it's not. Being gay isn’t a sin. From a theological perspective, that's not what the words even translate to. It's honestly complete misinformation that keeps getting passed down from an older, more ignorant generation. Do you really think Jesus was walking around warning people not to fuck dudes in the ass? Don't worry, there will be lots more on the misinformation passed down through churches and the unhealthy shame they place on people, and how that creates religious trauma that pushes them further from those communities.

When you come out in your 30s, it's like having to do it over and over. You have a lifetime of people who don't know parts of you at the same time you're still getting used to loving those parts and integrating them into who you are. Lots of people who know me through my life are finding these things out as they read this, just like you. The more I have come out and made friends like me, the more you realize how much shame a lot of people carry because they are different than the people who love them want them to be. It's just like this awkward thing that nobody really talks about but everyone knows. So many of us have been conditioned to think love from your family and friends means meeting their expectations, and that's not love; it’s conditional gratitude.

When children are young and learning how to navigate emotions as toddlers, there are lots of approaches. With what we know about the nervous system now, you realize some of those approaches are just wrong. But I know they are still used today. You will find that most of us were raised to not feel anger, sadness, rage—all the complex emotional behaviors that make kids have tantrums and be upset but also disrupt and upset the parents. So parents teach your nervous system that certain emotions aren’t acceptable around them. As you get older, you don’t remember, but your nervous system never forgets. So you learn conditional love from the people who are supposed to love you the most. This is psychological abuse in my opinion and is usually done unconsciously because it was the same way they were loved by their own parents.

I have two boys, and I have spent every part of my being learning how to untangle myself so they never experience what I did. So they don't go through a living hell and not be able to speak to the people who love them about what they have been through. So they don't hate and shame parts of themselves that should be loved. So they don't develop unhealthy coping mechanisms in life that could kill them one day. Life is meant to be felt, and emotions have to move through our nervous system. It's a parent's job to guide them through. Not all parents do this because it requires you to hold your behavior accountable first, and that's easier said than done. So I created this space for people like me who are on some spectrum of this journey needing support or guidance. I got you, and you are never alone. Loving yourself is hard because you realize how many people failed you when it comes to love, but you don't have to fail at it for yourself or those that come after you.