Photo from http://www.wookmark.com
This is the second post in the series on love. As I said a friend and I are going to have a conversation about love. His name is Adam Huish and no he is not my boyfriend, He has been married to a wonderful woman for several months now. This is the introduction he wrote for himself…
Adison and I were college roommates for two years and had many conversations deep into the night about anything and everything. Him and I will most likely disagree on some measures but we have had conversations in the past and I trust us to discuss it fairly. An example of how we will disagree is the way that we view the LDS church. Even though I went through sleepless nights and had a long period of seriously questioning the church, I eventually discovered personal enlightenment and humble understanding from the doctrines that are taught while Adison finds solace comfort and enlightenment without that in his life….
I would like to add some more information about Adam. In college he focused his studies in philosophy. He learned to look into subjects deeply and understand the logic and true meaning of statements and arguments. During the time I lived with him he used that skill to study love. He had an interest in understanding what it meant to have a meaningful relationship. There is not really a degree, that I know of, to study love; other than something in counseling. He spent a lot of time on it and I trust him to be honest here to a fault.
My name is Adison Pace. I grew up in Sandy Utah. I was a Mormon much of my life and until fairly recently (close to two years ago) I was “anxiously engaged in the work.” Over the last couple years I have gone through some changes in how I understand myself and my religion and culture. I no longer am a believer. I find solace in truth or better realism and humanism. I am gay. This was one of the biggest things that caused a rift in my relationship with my religion and culture. I knew this from a young age but did not want to accept it. I fought the feelings I felt for other men at the most basic level I could. The efforts to control these feelings exacerbated some issues I have with obsessive compulsive disorder at one point I reached a moment were I had to receive treatment and take medication to help myself get a handle on it. During that treatment I went to an excellent psychologist. He helped me not focus on the things that caused the stress but focus on how I handled it. During that I came to understand how similar my compulsions were to how I felt about religion. I learned that trying to change certain things about myself was damaging me. I had been told I could do it and is seemed to me at the time that the implication was, if I was righteous and tried hard I would accomplish it. “Think of a hymn,” “why would god give this “challenge” to someone and not give them a way out of it.” Actual advice not from local leaders but the top ones in Salt Lake. Eventually I came to accept different parts of who I am. I came out of the closet bit by bit to friends and family and grew to understand myself and others better overtime. I have met a lot of great guys and I am working on understanding the different expectations and culture changes that I have come across when dating outside of the church.
That is one of the things that sparked this conversation about love and I wanted to share it and to ask for the opinions of anyone who reads this. I wanted to introduce my friend and I first before starting the conversation because I think it is important to understand who is talking if you want to better understand their opinions.
Related articles
- Understanding Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (christinehammondcounseling.com)
adisonsays's Blog 