When you didn’t get enough of something as a kid, it can have lifelong consequences, especially if you didn’t get enough validation as a child. If you’re a gay man, you probably didn’t get the validation you wanted and needed growing up. Luckily, there are ways to learn how to provide that validation for yourself.

The Importance of Gay Self-Validation

When you didn’t get enough of something as a kid, it can have lifelong consequences, especially if you didn’t get enough validation as a child.

If you’re a gay man, here’s probably what didn’t happen to you when you were a little boy.

When you were in first grade and had a crush on one of your classmates, nobody thought it was really cute when you wanted to hold his hand.
When you were in third grade, and you had a crush on your third grade teacher, no one said to you, ‘Someday, honey, you’re gonna grow up and marry a man just like him.”
When you were in sixth grade, you probably weren’t speaking to your friends for hours on the phone about all the cute guys in your class.
In eighth grade, you probably weren’t kissing other boys in spin the bottle.

In fact, when you were growing up, you probably thought that your sexuality was a little bit weird or gross. Or perhaps the people that you love most thought your sexuality was a little bit weird or gross.

We’ve got some healing to do in the self validation department.

Of course it can be learned. But if we don’t, well, it can have lifelong consequences.

Maybe you don’t validate yourself, and that’s why you think you spend too much time, perhaps on Grindr, or too many nights getting really drunk and waking up with hangovers. Maybe that’s why you’re overachieving at work, or at the gym and you’re feeling really exhausted. Maybe that’s why you’re working hard to please everybody, even when you don’t want to.

How do we heal from a lifelong pattern of not having enough self validation?

Well, it can be learned, that’s the great news. There’s many ways to do it. You can start with books if you like to read. There’s the classic Velvet Rage by Alan Downs. We even have an eclass, it’s free, about how to love yourself as a gay person.

There are many, many ways – therapy of course is, at its core, a way to learn about self validation, however you want to do it. Please do it. It can have lifelong consequences, in terms of increasing your sense of joy.