What has changed? It has been a question I’ve asked myself so many times on this journey over the last few years. What has changed?

I feel guilty sometimes. Guilty that I have had it easy. Guilty that my life is so comfortable. Guilty for desiring something I shouldn’t. Yet I also feel envious sometimes. Envious of people who seem to, well, feel more than me. Envious of people who have got to a place of knowing themselves better and sooner.

Strangely, there have even been times when I have envied those who went through some traumatic and transformational experience. I have envied the impetus to change that might have proved for them. Of course, this is an utterly ridiculous thing to want, not to mention insulting to those who have been through so much pain. I think it just indicates that I want something that is hard won. From my place of comfort and ease it’s easy to glamourise the ‘struggle’ when I have no idea how hard and isolating it is.

‘Struggle.’ Interesting word. In Christian culture, struggle has taken on a particular meaning. It is a word I have used a lot in the past decade to describe my experience and I want to explain what it used to mean and what it means, perhaps, now. For a long time, struggle was the most appropriate word for me to use to describe my experience of sexuality. My go-to phrase when ‘going deep’ with someone was ‘I struggle with same-sex attraction.’ Struggle suggests an attempt at rejection. A process of moving beyond and putting something behind you. An attempt to overcome. This was how I saw my sexuality. Something to overcome. To move on from.

Now, I didn’t grow up in a Christianity of exclusion, where anyone was praying away the gay or rejecting those who didn’t conform. I grew up in a very British, slightly nominal, definitely relaxed, environment of suburban Anglicanism. Hardly a progressive bastion, yet neither a place of hellfire and brimstone teaching that you might imagine as the backdrop for a ‘gay kid growing up christian’ drama.

A question that I’ve come to dwell on more and more is ‘Why then, did I reject my sexuality?’ No one was telling me it was wrong at church. My parents were particular to avoid discussing relationships at all most of the time, in a way that I came to experience as respectful and freeing. I was under no particular pressure. So what was it that made me spend many teenage nights pacing my room, obsessively calling out to God about this thing I wanted to reject? That I could just about come to accept as a reality, but which surely must be a passing phase? Something to be struggled with and defeated.

As a teenager in the early 2000s, I was mostly incredibly fortunate in the era of history I was growing up in. I think for many British millennials, there is this time in our memory when the government was good (or at least not impacting our daily lives very much), social media was simple, and we had ‘Snake’ on our phones. Yet my experience as a kid also, as it does for so many, taught me that I had to fit in. That avoiding difference at all costs was a goal. In my case, that staying at home and keeping my head down was the best way through.

This natural reserve, and fear of discovery, meant that when I came to understand the gospel for the first time (and I mean here, the more literal, evangelical gospel of my university years), I had found the perfect reason to keep on avoiding discovery. A system of belief that validated my self-denial and fear, labelled my experience as Christian ‘struggle’ and encouraged me to keep going, with the vague hope of change in the future. And this was enough. This was more than that. I found meaning, joy, community in the church. For these things and these years I am thankful. I was able to shed layers of fear and become more confident and open. I felt loved and accepted. Powerful and good things. Even if, looking back, some hard lessons hadn’t really been learnt and some future pain was being set up.

The first time I came out to anybody, in snatched half-sentences, became a model for my subsequent comings out (is that the plural?) It was a confession of sin. An admission of a stain on my heart and character that I felt could never be removed. I remember it viscerally. The stuttering conversation went from talking about struggling (there it is again…) with porn, to admitting I was looking at gay porn and was attracted to guys. It was an experience that was both thrilling and mortifying. My friend, a fellow Christian, was kind and loving. I never felt rejected. Our friendship grew as a result.

It is my fortunate testimony that every time I have come out to someone, it has been a positive experience. I have never known rejection or condemnation. I never felt, nor was I encouraged to think, that ‘being gay’ was sinful. But I very quickly learned to talk about my struggle (!) in the sense of it being a struggle with sin. And yes, lust is sinful, it is degrading to all involved, but I saw any expression of my gay sexuality as sinful. From how I thought, to the films I let myself watch, to how I acted and spoke.

That became my struggle. I didn’t speak about it that much. It was the kind of thing kept for the dark, for those ‘real talk’ conversations with friends. The light at the end of the tunnel was undoubtedly marriage. That I would be attracted to a woman, that I could make it work. That was something that I wanted, that others wanted for me, but that also made lots of friendships complicated.

Often, my comings out (I’m rolling with it) were with girls in the DTR (define the relationship) context. My view of my sexuality was causing me to hold back so much of myself, except for in these most personal moments, when I was forced to expose this wound so that it wouldn’t hurt others too. I never really dated a girl. It just never felt right. Looking back, I can say with confidence that my attraction has always been for guys and guys only.

So how do I view my ‘struggle’ now? What did change? It’s hard to put my finger on when it started to be honest. I can’t point to one traumatic incident or irreconcilable difference. I think I have always been pretty liberal, my evangelicalism never more than skin deep in most things, so why did it take so long for me to be open to pursuing for myself what I never begrudged others? I think it comes down to understanding. Understanding and community. I have always been someone who likes to understand what I’m doing and why. I’m also someone who is powerfully impacted by the stories of others. It is easy to live a single life when most around you are single and when your choice matches well with that of those in your community. That was the case for me in my twenties; it was pretty easy being single. I think I never really faced up to the fact that logically, my desire for relationship could not be fulfilled if I kept pursuing the non-affirming path I was on.

I don’t think I ever really admitted to actually wanting a relationship with a man. That a good and healthy thing could come from this desire that had so far been reserved for the darkest corners of my world, was too much for me to comprehend.

The last few years have been a time of frustration and perhaps some of that hard-won growth. Of facing up to the logical conclusions of my feelings and beliefs. There have been many times when I have felt like I had to choose; faith or sexuality. I hope that I have started to move beyond that lose-lose situation, that I can have peace with both. Yes, understanding has been key. I have read a lot of writing from a lot of people with a lot of different opinions, stories and perspectives. But also vital is my own conviction. Ultimately, it is my future. Under God’s guidance and protection I want to be fruitful. I want to have peace. I feel closer to that than before, even if I know that I am not at the end.

I think an important moment for me was a recent realisation in answer to the question ‘What stops you from saying you are affirming of same-sex relationships?’ I felt like I understood a logical support for such relationships, had overcome some of my doubts, and was already living as openly gay with those around me. So what was holding me back? It was like realising that the wall that had held me back for so long was just no longer there. It wasn’t so much a falling down, as a realisation that maybe there was simply no wall at all.

I don’t know what the future holds. I know that if all this has just been for me to get to experience romance, then it is ultimately pretty empty. I know that Christianity, and society generally, needs to validate singleness more. But if it has been me facing up to core pieces of my humanity, which God made me with, and gaining a greater peace, then it will have been worth the rambling road it’s taken me to get here.

These years of struggle (…) don’t feel like they’ve been very fruitful. I believe that a key part of our faith in Jesus is that we should bear good fruit. I pray that I am able to bear more fruit now, to be more open to Jesus’ leading, and to be free from the oppression that ultimately came from my own fearful heart. I am no longer a prisoner of fear, and that at least feels like growth.