Esther Perel is a psychotherapist, a best-selling author, and the host of the podcast Where Should We Begin? She’s also a leading expert on contemporary relationships. This column is adapted from the podcast — which is now part of the Vox Media Podcast Network — and you can listen and follow for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
This week’s caller is a gay, devout Muslim man who feels as if he’s “sitting on a fault line and staying atop it means that there is the threat of it crumbling at any given moment.” He wants to find a relationship with someone who shares his same traditional values and emphasizes chastity until marriage. “The polar opposites of extreme secularism in the U.S. — in the gay community specifically — and extreme homophobia within the Muslim American community have been exhausting to exist in.” His family, who tried sending him to conversion programs after he first came out, think that “being gay is not a sin, but having a gay life would be.”
In this wide-ranging and moving conversation with Esther Perel, she refocuses his question. It is less about wanting to find an impossibly perfect partner and more about the dilemma between living religiously and living authentically as a gay man. “Either I have my family, but I feel lifeless inside,” she explains, “or I allow myself to experience intimacy with a man and I lose my roots, my family.”
Esther Perel: Here we are to have this conversation. Are you out?
Caller: Yes, I am out. I want somebody who is also out.
Esther: To their family as well?
Caller: Right. I am out to my friends and family. Not to many people in my religious community and not to the elders. But my family knows, my friends know, and co-workers. Anyone who knows me knows.
Esther: Your imam?
Caller: My imam is actually my dad, so he’s one of the imams in our local Muslim community. It was a little challenging when I was trying to navigate that growing up. We’re the imam’s children.
Esther: Okay, he’s your dad, he’s your imam, and he’s your guide and teacher. What has he said? Because far from me to compete with the imam.
Caller: His response has been interesting. I would say overall it’s negative. So his main belief is that being gay is not a sin, but having a gay life would be. Meaning finding a partner in any way would be the sinful part. He made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with me if I ever came out publicly. It was the same with my mom. I wouldn’t say they were violent about it. They did try to approach it with some compassion and they were like, “Hey, you know what? We want the best for you. And the best would be to never say anything.” So I would say overall negative, but I’m still really glad that I told them and they know.
Esther: So, your bind, as I just heard it, is not about “how do I meet another man of faith, Muslim, chaste, etc.” but that “if I was to meet that man, I would lose my father.” That’s a different bind.
Caller: Right.
Esther: Right what?
Caller: It’s not as simple as I thought. I never felt like it was that specifically. But I’m seeing how they connect now.
Esther: You feeling it?
Caller: Yeah, when you finished your sentence, I felt a heaviness in my stomach.
Esther: I saw that, even through the screen. And I even had a wicked thought that, in a crazy way, you’re blessed not to find your romantic partner upon whom you’ve put impossible demands: He needs to be out, but he needs to be chaste, and he needs to be of deep faith. It’s set up in such a way that it’s almost impossible to meet him, but it’s a blessing that you don’t meet him, because as long as you don’t meet him, you don’t lose your dad and maybe your mom. This is maybe less a romantic struggle than a loyalty bind, and you don’t want to lose your dad, who loves you deeply and whom you love deeply, but can’t for the life of him begin to imagine having a gay son who’s living a gay life. So you are doing exactly what he said. “I don’t mind your being gay, but you can’t live a gay lifestyle.” That’s what you’re doing. On the one hand, you’re holding on to him. And on the other hand, you’re feeling what on the inside?
Caller: I’m feeling very lonely. I don’t feel like I have any anchor, like I truly belong anywhere. I’m just in isolation. That’s really what it feels like. To be able to exist in all of these worlds on my own with no one around me, it’s really sad. It’s turbulent, but it’s also sad.
Esther: And it’s lifeless.
Caller: Oh, absolutely. That’s a great word for it. It does feel lifeless.
Esther: And have you ever had that conversation with him? What does he suggest?
Caller: No, I haven’t. We only had that one conversation when I initially told him and that was when I was in college, seven or so years ago.
Esther: So that’s seven years of lifelessness. Wow. Who is your person in the family or in the community with whom you can talk about this? Anyone?
Caller: In my family, no. Um …
Esther: Do you know any others?
Caller: I have here and there. I do have one friend in another state.
Esther: Gay Muslim?
Caller: Yes, she is. I confide in her a lot and I try to visit her often, but I don’t have anyone that’s close by in proximity or that I can rely on consistently. Yeah, I kind of save everything, I bundle it up until I get to talk to her at some point.
Esther: It’s so isolating. My heart goes out to you. I’m thinking about a film. It’s called Trembling Before God. But interestingly, it’s about Orthodox Jewish queer people. Different religion, but not that far.
Caller: Same God. Sometimes same people too.
Esther: It’s an incredible documentary. It’s not recent. In a strange way, you will have an experience of community by listening to these multiple people of faith who are all struggling with the silence, the secret, the exclusion, the double life, the shame, the family, mournings, et cetera. And they all tremble before God. They all know who they are and they all know who they’re supposed to be. And it’s excruciating. But your dilemma is not about finding somebody, because in an interesting way, your life is set up in a way where you’re not meant to find that somebody. The price you would have to pay is unbearable, and I stand humble before you.
Caller: When you said that, the irony about my favorite movie growing up was The Little Mermaid, and that’s exactly what I thought of now.
Esther: Tell me more.
Caller: I mean, the price that Ariel had to pay for a life that she wanted was, she completely gave up her whole species. I can’t fathom doing that in my own life either.
Esther: Have you had any relationships?
Caller: I have.
Esther: Men, women, them?
Caller: Men. I’ve never been with a woman. I have had relationships with men. They tend to be much shorter. I would say the longest, probably four or five months. I think a lot of why things end is our lifestyles don’t align.
Esther: Meaning you don’t want to have sex.
Caller: Right. That’s the main issue. That usually either somebody is onboard at the beginning and then changes their mind, or he thinks he can and then he can’t. It’s disappointing. The straight girlfriends that I have that are Muslim, their experience is almost like they get rewarded socially and they find somebody who respects it or is also on the same path. So maybe they wait for a while and then they meet a great guy and then it works out. Whereas on my end, that seems to be a speed bump, where if that wasn’t an issue, I don’t know how the relationship could have progressed, which is really disappointing.
Esther: But you have created a hierarchy. It is worse to have sex with men than to be with men. As long as I’m not sexual with them, it’s not as what? Forbidden? Explain to me how you’ve organized it inside of you — because you have to shuffle many parts.
Caller: Oh, yes, we’ve been shuffling for years. I value the marriage part. I do want sex to be a spiritual experience that I’m only having with my husband and I do want to be married. So for me, that’s how I was raised. That’s how I grew up. The expectation was I would do that for my future wife. So just because I happen to be attracted to men, I would be disappointed in myself if I strayed from that spiritual contract I made with God. So, just because I came out, why does that mean that I have to change that value?
Esther: Who else do you trust to have such a conversation with within your community? I mean, you’re not the first. You may be the first to your dad, but your dad has spoken with members of his community that had the same dilemma. Does he advise them?
Caller: Oh, absolutely.
Esther: And then what happens? What is his advice? Hold your kid with feet to the fire? If they do stray from the path, you have to mourn them? You have to cut off from them? What do you know about how he has helped other members of his community? He’s a wise man.
Caller: He is. The thing is that would be an inappropriate topic to talk about at home. I know how he handled it with me.
Esther: But you had one conversation seven years ago.
Caller: I had one conversation seven years ago, but I’ve had several others with my mom, who I’m sure has kind of triangulated us. Me, him, and her, because I am the oldest.
Esther: On top of it.
Caller: Yes, I am the oldest of four.
Esther: I should have asked you. That’s one more responsibility. Yes, I hear you.
Caller: Yes. And, it is a little bit more complicated because had circumstances been different for me, and they didn’t have sympathy, my story would be really different.
Esther: Meaning?
Caller: When I first came out to my mother and to my sister, she spent months and months trying to find counselors in our state to help me become straight. When that didn’t work, after months and months, she talked to my dad and they started to look at programs overseas. And so the plan was to send me to conversion programs overseas.
Esther: And you went each time?
Caller: I went to the counseling sessions in the States, yes. I was still an undergrad when all of this was happening, and I was still living at home. But, I could not handle going. I was going and I knew at that point nothing could be changed and I was starting to accept myself, but I wanted to go along with what she was suggesting just to show her like, “hey, actually, even if you try, this is not going to work.” So I didn’t want her to feel some resistance.
Esther: Can I ask you something?
Caller: Yes.
Esther: Do you accept?
Caller: I do. I do believe that I have a place in Islam, which is, I think, part of why I do really value it. I hold it dear.
Esther: Go back to your mom and dad a sec. You were telling me something.
Caller: I didn’t want them to see that I was resisting them. One after the other, when she would find these counselors, when they didn’t tell her what she wanted, she would fire them. She would sit in the session with me, and then that’s when they decided, we’re gonna ship you off, and you’ll go to this conversion program in Saudi Arabia or Syria, even though there was a civil war happening in Syria at the time. Um, I couldn’t handle that. And when they saw that I couldn’t handle that, that’s when they took a big pause and we stopped talking about it entirely.
Esther: What would happen if they heard this podcast? Because you’re talking to me, but you’re talking to them.
Caller: I am. I would honestly think they would be a little bit surprised. They would probably feel betrayed. I think they would want to distance themselves if they actually heard this.
Esther: And you knew that before you spoke to me?
Caller: Absolutely.
Esther: Is there a statement in this?
Caller: I guess part of me believes that they’re still stuck even after all of these years. They’re still in that same spot where they think something might change.
Esther: Meaning it’s a matter of choice.
Caller: Right.
Esther: And you’re trying to tell them, “This is not a choice, this is who I am, how I’m born, but it is also God’s will. And maybe God’s will is for you to actually be challenged with something that feels impossible to you.”
Caller: Absolutely. Yes.
Esther: “Because otherwise, I will be caught in a struggle between ‘if I hold onto me, I lose you, and if I hold on to you, I lose me. I either have my family, but I feel lifeless inside. Or I allow myself to connect and to experience closeness and intimacy with a man and I lose my roots, my family. I carry the burden and the responsibility of having shamed you and dishonored you publicly.’”
Caller: They would lose their validity in the religious community if they supported me publicly. A lot of it is social.
Esther: It’s a Faustian bargain. When one is caught in such a bind, sometimes, in an ironic way, the best thing is to be stuck. As long as you’re stuck, you don’t pay any price. It’s kind of lopsided, but the goal is not to become unstuck because to become unstuck is to instantly be thrown in an impossible loss.
Caller: It would feel like an impossible loss, absolutely. But at the same time, this is just my life. And I’ve tried the pretending. It’s not healthy. It’s my life.
Esther: Right, but you come from a tradition that does not really care too much about what is healthy in the western sense of the word.
Caller: Yeah, that’s very accurate.
Esther: So you’re mixing and matching a bunch of different value systems here. And he said it very clearly, “I understand what you are, but that doesn’t mean that that’s how you need to live.” So, how you need to live precedes what you are. You come from a tradition where preserving the relationships, the honor, the respectability come ahead of your personal authenticity or being true to yourself. And it feels unbearable at times and untenable because it’s like, “how much will I choke on the inside in order to preserve my relationships? But if I become true to myself, or if I express my own authentic self, I will lose all my relationships connected to my family.” Maybe not all your siblings, but more importantly, “I will make it impossible for my father to continue to be the teacher and the honorable member of his community that he is. Because he will have to bear the shame that he wasn’t able to stop me.”
There is a way for you to think about not being so close. If you want to do this while living in their neighborhood, it’s going to be very difficult. If you decide “my duty, my role as the firstborn son, my role as the son of the imam is what I will let myself be defined by,” then you will make a choice that is about duty and obligation, and that’s an honorable choice. And it comes with its consequences.
If you want to play the more secular American narrative, then you will say, “accepting that is accepting that I’m an aberration, and that is impossible for me. So it’s an I and thou battle. Am I vowing loyalty to the relationships and to where I’m from, or am I vowing loyalty to myself?” You live in a society that values identity and personal authenticity way more than your community and many other communities. But as a gay man, you are really on the fault line. You couldn’t have chosen a better word. As a gay man who is devout and Muslim and a man of faith and a loyal son — in every other way you probably have been a wonderful son. You’re smiling. Or crying. Which is it?
Caller: I’m smiling.
Esther: Okay. Tell me more.
Caller: It was nice to hear that from you, “you were probably a good son.” ’Cause I do feel like I’ve made a lot of sacrifices for my family that are completely unseen but silently expected.
Esther: I didn’t just say this to say something nice. I know it from listening to you and watching you and seeing the excruciating inner turmoil, which you are discussing with a Jewish woman of all things. How transgressive can we be?
Caller: That’s part of the appeal. Might as well do it all.
Esther: Do you think they know the sacrifices? I know that you say they silently accepted. But do you think they know? I’m a witness, but you’re going to meet me once in your life and you carry this with you. But among your siblings, your mom, do you have grandparents, uncles?
Caller: I do have grandparents.
Esther: There’s a big smala.
Caller: Big family. Yes.
Esther: So in the smala, people see you as a very devoted son. And they wonder why you don’t have a family yet?
Caller: Yes. Why I’m not married.
Esther: And they introduce you to one woman after another? At every wedding?
Caller: Every function.
Esther: In the many plots that you have entertained in your head, do you ever imagine being married with a woman and letting her know that you want to have a family with her but that you also are a gay man?
Caller: I have thought of that in the past. And I think that that can be done much easier than I even think and people would be willing as long as everyone is honest in the process. But Esther, I’m too much of a romantic. I do want romantic love. To me, it would feel like I was…
Esther: Lying all over the place.
Caller: Yes. Absolutely.
Esther: Is it that? It’s the lying? Or it’s the compromising?
Caller: Compromising. But I would feel like I was soiling the love if I had to have 800 schemes for me to even be in the same room as him. That part would make me feel like it was wrong, even if I believed that it wasn’t.
Esther: You don’t give yourself many options.
Caller: No, I know, and as I said that, I was realizing that.
Esther: You want it pure and absolute in an environment that may not allow for that. By definition, any kind of resolution will be a compromise. If you just go on saying “I’m too much of a romantic and an absolutist and a purist,” I worry that you are going to dry up to such a point that you’ll explode. And then you will pay a price that is way too big and not what you want either. So holding on to principles and to purity or absolutism — it may be very true, but it may not be wise.
Caller: It’s really difficult for me to accept that. I do follow logically.
Esther: Yes, I know. But you’re going back and forth between fear and rage. Part of you is afraid and part of you is enraged that that’s what you should have to do and feels that it is a profound injustice.
Caller: Yes.
Esther: How does it speak in your head, that voice?
Caller: It tells me that this isn’t my easy way out of not being religious. And after all, I’m not going to be able to upkeep those principles because I’m not religious enough. That’s a really big issue for me, that feeling that I’ve tried to run away from is that I’m not religious enough, which my mom and dad have both said.
Esther: And if I was, I would be able to suppress that whole part of me and follow the program.
May I ask you a question of ignorance? Are you meant to become an imam yourself?
Caller: I’m not, no. That was the plan, but I didn’t want to, I didn’t have interest in it. So my brother is being trained to do that.
Esther: Okay. If I was religious enough … if I was as upstanding as I would like to be or think I should be, I would what?
Caller: I would be able to uphold my religious values as a gay man the same way I would have if I was straight.
Esther: And given that I am not, then what?
Caller: Given that I’m not, I have to try harder.
Esther: Okay, so if I try harder, I don’t have to ask a question about how I meet my partner.
Caller: What is that? Can you elaborate on that?
Esther: Yes. If I try harder, it means that my being a queer man is not meant to be a part of my life in active form. Maybe in yearning, longing, fantasy, imagination, but not in active form in reality. So everything inside of me yearns to meet someone and every other part inside of me is making sure that that doesn’t happen so that I can prove my devoutness.
Caller: Yeah, I do see that.
Esther: Say it in your own words.
Caller: I exist in an environment that makes it almost impossible to meet someone, but my imagination keeps that possibility alive.
Esther: I have different departments inside of me. I have the imaginative department, but I also have the censorship bureau. My imagination keeps seeing me meet people because it’s like a lifeline for me to know that there is hope and that love exists for me. But my censorship bureau makes sure that I don’t ever really meet somebody, so that I can maintain my devoutness and prove to myself and my family that I am worthy of being the firstborn Muslim son.
Caller: I never thought of having a censorship department. I never actively saw that. That is such a poignant analogy.
Esther: We can call it a censorship bureau. We can call it homophobia, but we can also call it a part of you that protects you from something that feels the worst thing that could happen. It’s not just a restrictive bureau of censorship. It also has a protective element to it in its weird but very obvious way.
Caller: It does serve a purpose.
Esther: Yeah. A deep purpose.
What’s something that we have not touched that you would say, “oh, I wish I had not forgotten that or not left that out?”
Caller: There is one thing as we were talking about the not-religious-enough piece that I’m now seeing is related. When you talked about that intensity at which I want to adhere to my values. So, the reason why my parents had a more positive reaction than a traditional immigrant Muslim family is because part of their reasoning for why I am gay is because of sexual assault that happened as a child. They know that that happened to me and they attribute this to that trauma. There is some sympathy on their end because of that. When we were talking about me wanting to really prove the religiosity and adhere strictly, that did come up for me in my head. And having a pure love — I do feel like part of it is probably related.
Esther: Can you tell me? Or you either tell me or I tell you what I’m guessing?
Caller: In surviving that experience, I did feel like I was tainted somehow. I still sometimes feel that way. I don’t feel like I was able to get justice from that, and I feel like if in my adulthood I am able to have a marriage or meet somebody and have a more traditional and chaste sexual life until I’m married, it would feel like it would undo the wrong in a way. Even though it’s unrelated.
Esther: Tell me if I hear you well. Both you and your parents bring compassion to yourself through this experience. It gives it a framework. Do they know who it was and what it was?
Caller: They do know who it was, yeah.
Esther: If I find the love I imagine, if I experience the intimacy and the cherishing that I imagine., I will know that this person didn’t take the best of me. That I’m lovable, worthy, and that I didn’t just survive, but I revived. Am I hearing you?
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: So maybe this is not about “am I religious enough.” I mean that may be a question you have too. But this is, “am I whole enough? Am I not broken? My parents find compassion for me in my brokenness and it’s better than nothing but it confirms my brokenness. While that works for them, or for my relationship with them, when it comes to me, what I want to know is that I’m whole and this is not the determining event of my life.” I’m saying this without knowing anything of what happened to you. But just tell me something: Was it once or multiple?
Caller: It was once. When I say I made a lot of sacrifices for them, I was instructed not to say anything because it would ruin our reputation. No police reports were made. Nothing. And now, having grown up, I do kind of wish that we did. I made the sacrifice for them.
Esther: Do they know?
Caller: I don’t think so. I never told them that.
Esther: That’s what you mean by the sacrifices that are expected, but are not really made explicit. You carry so much. You carry secrets. You carry rape. You carry the unspoken. You carry shame. You carry love. You carry the loneliness of not being touched enough. You carry the burden of a firstborn son. You carry the burden or the responsibility of the son of the imam, of the holy man. And how could you desecrate that? You carry your unfulfilled longings and unmet wishes. I have deep respect for you.
Caller: I appreciate that.
Esther: And thank you for telling me. Also the last part. So that you didn’t make a sacrifice … finish the sentence.
Caller: So that I didn’t make a sacrifice and it wasn’t just my secret to hold.
Esther: If we spoke longer I would start to ask more questions. But I don’t want to open up a can that I won’t be able to close. So, I think you let me in a little bit and that’s fine. Thank you so much.
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