Question by mooded: What developmental issues has Douglas not entirely resolved?
Douglas is a 35 year old graduate student in Social Work at Tufts University. He has a degree in law and worked for two years in a prestigious law firm in Boston and though he got good reviews from the senior partners, he felt that being an attorney was not a good fit for him. He said that, in retrospect, he realized that he became an attorney because it was what his family expected him to do. His family was disappointed when he dropped out of law and contemptuous of his new career goal calling him a “bleeding heart liberal” and telling him not to ask them for money if he doesn’t earn enough. His mother, a successful realtor, gave his married sister who followed the family script of what kind of person to be $ 100,000 for a down payment on her home.
Douglas comes from a conservative family that is very concerned about status—paticularly his mother. He has an older brother and younger sister. His mother and father were divorced when he was sixteen. His mother was drawn to his father because he was very handsome and good at sports but devalued his father because he did not earn as much money as she did. His mother never remarried.
While he was not that involved with his father when he grew up because his father worked many hours and was absent from the house and because his mother interfered with the fathers’s relationship with all three children, he and his partner now have a good relationship with his father and stepmother and feels accepted by him.
In contrast, he has little relationship with his mother. When he began therapy, the primary interaction that he reported was his mother making him feel guilty for not calling him often enough or sending her birthday cards and valentines. Though his mother expects Douglas to be responsive to her needs, she is not responsive to his. She has never been able to accept Douglas being gay. She refuses to visit him and his partner and would not attend his commitment ceremony when he invited her. She expects him to visit her without his partner. When she first discovered that he was gay, she told him that if she had know that he would be gay, she would have had an abortion.
Douglas remembers several incidents of his mother being abusive. Before going to church, she pinched all the children’s cheeks so they would look rosy. At thirteen, she pushed him down the stairs and he broke his arm. She took him to the emergency room and told the nurses that he fell down the stairs and Douglas was expected to collude with her. Douglas said that when she recalls the incident, she believes that he actually did fall down the stairs and attributes it to his clumsiness. Douglas is not clumsy. Douglas said that his mother was viewed as a pillar of the community and well respected in her church and business. She acted kind, generous and charming with other people…especially her real estate clients who adored her.
Douglas said that he decided to study social work because he was genuinely concerned about the plight of humanity. He was, for example, heavily involved in campaigning for Obama and was on the Board of Directors at AIDS-Boston. Douglas had not yet decided if he wanted to work with people on a one to one basis doing counseling or at a community level where he could use his law degree as well as his social work degree to advocate for people who could not advocate for themselves.
Douglas acknowledged that he was gay in his early twenties. As he was warm, smart, funny and attractive getting dates with women was easy for him He dated women for awhile and while he had good relationships with them, he became slowly aware that something was missing in his romantic relationships.
His first serious gay relationship was tumultuous as he was involved with someone who was charming and attractive but alcohol, unfaithful to him and had anger management problems. Douglas also had an alcohol and drug problem that began as a teenager but has abstained from substance abuse for 13 years. He went to seek seek therapy from a gay psychiatrist who helped him to accept being gay, stop using drugs and extricating himself from the relationship. When asked why he didn’t return to see him, he said that while he was very grateful for his help, he thought that the therapist was too narcissistic and he felt pulled to admire him and not to confront him. This was corroborated by other people’s experience with the therapy. He felt guilty not going back to him.
For the last 5 years, Douglas has been in a committed relationship with a kind, stable philosophy professor who teaches at a different university. He expresses deep love for his partner and feels loved and accepted by him. They co-operate on daily tasks and long term goals, and respect and support each other. They don’t have sex as often as he would like because his partner works a great deal and does not have as high a sex drive as Douglas does.    Read more...