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overcoming those problems will lead to a change
in your sexuality
- your behavior/orientation/identity is the root cause
of your problems, but you can learn new and better
ways of expressing that sexuality which will lead to
a relief of the problems
- your behavior/orientation/identity is not the root
cause of your problems, but is a venue in which
those problems are enacted, so that overcoming the
problems will lead to healthier ways of expressing
your sexuality
- most likely, a mixture of the first four.
Of course, it's possible that your emotional issues
might have nothing whatsoever to do with your sexuality;
sometimes depression is simply depression. However,
your sexuality manifests itself in many places in your
life: if you're seeking help with loneliness, for example,
you may eventually want to talk to your therapist about
your efforts to find friends and/or lovers ­ and he may
not understand why you're ruling out your local church
group. And a counselor who thinks any deviation from
monogamy signals the end of the marriage will not
understand why you and your spouse are considering an
open marriage, even if both of you have agreed that it's
the best way to get your special sexual needs met.
Perhaps most importantly, living in a sex-negative
(sexually repressed) culture ­ as we all do ­ is an important
factor in the emotional life of anybody whose sexuality
doesn't fit the traditional profile of vanilla heterosexual
monogamy. Remember, therapists grew up in this culture,
too, and internalized many of its values. Becoming a