Hi! I'm CSL, and I haven't been posting much in recent months, but I've been hovering and watching the goings on in my little home away from home here.

I can't help but to envy your childhood experiences with your friends. I was always too shy and afraid to risk rejection from my friends to start anything, and that's what I regret more than anything about my youth.

I wanted to offer you a bit of advice, as a current psych major and future priest: That stuff about not having made successful male-male relationships? crumple it up, and drop kick it out of your life. The only people who still see Freud's phallic stage as relevant to anything at all, or even existing, are the (non-scientific!) ex-gay movements. There are no credible psychologists who believe that this can somehow "cause" homosexual feelings, nor pedosexual feelings. In fact, this has been a specific discussion in no less than 3 of my classes so far. It's one of the many things Freud got horribly horribly wrong that just refuses to go away and stop hurting people. All it leads to is regret, self loathing, and confusion. It makes being BL (or ephebeophile, being the technical name for you, being attracted to pubertal boys) or homosexual seem like a mental disorder that could be cured "if only" you could form a few "healthy male-male relationships", and then every time you start getting close to a male as friends, and you still have the feelings for the boys, you think there's something wrong (consciously or not) and you become depressed and confused. Forget the whole idea, it's wrong-headed, and dangerous, and I promise you that if you work at not regretting, and not filling yourself with false hopes of a miraculous "cure" for your complicated gift, you will eventually feel better about it. I have, finally.

I would also like to encourage you in your relationship with this teen. Respect his wishes, and help him to process his feelings as best you can, even if they lead him away from you.

That's the test of real love:
You have a small bird in your hand, and it's moving around. Do you hold it tight, keeping it for yourself, and in so doing crush its fragile body, or do you hold it with an open hand, free to make its own choices for its own good?

Love in Christ,
~CSL