Former homeschooler, lots guilt and discomfort

I posted the below on various message boards recently, as I’ve had some longstanding issues that simply must be addressed, and I wanted outside feedback. Almost everyone recommended that I visit a therapist, which I’m doing this Tuesday. Anyway, I stumbled across this board and thought my story might be relevant, as Gothard plays a part.

I was homeschooled through the tenth grade in a very religious home. I’m currently 26, and a lot of attendant social and sexual hang-ups remain.

My mother was toxically prudish while I was growing up. When confronted with anything sexually suggestive in any context, she would delve into a frenzied hissy fit, ordering me to cover my eyes, etc. She once said that all sex, even within marriage, was sinful. When the guys and the girls in our homeschooling group began hanging out together, she grew very concerned, and later she blew up and started yelling when I wanted to play miniature golf with a group containing both genders.

My father wasn’t so much toxically prudish as deeply cynical. He told me once that love is a lie. Women only care about money, and sex is just a tool they use to control men. He insisted that I not date until after college and only then if I had lots of money, and he recommended that I avoid women altogether if I could.

When I began experiencing sexual feelings, I understood them well enough to know that they were sexual, but not enough to understand that they were natural, as I was never given “the talk.” All I knew was that sex was earth-shatteringly dirty and destructive and evil. My days were mostly spent sitting around the house festering in sexual guilt, loneliness, and self-loathing. I fell into a pattern of masturbating to escape, feeling awful for it, and then masturbating more to cope with those feelings. I was worried that by masturbating I was killing myself, or that my parents would lock me in an asylum if they found out. Masturbation became my primary means of dealing with depression, and it remains so today.

I grew reclusive, introverted, gloomy, and self-conscious, particularly around the opposite sex. I’ve never even been on a date. For most of my life, I’ve been weighed down with so much guilt and self-loathing that most of my interactions seem disconnected, like I’m just acting. Generally, I’m friendly enough with people to get along, but I’m so self-conscious that social interactions tend to exhaust me.

During college, I mostly kept to myself, shuttling between work and school and studying a lot since I wasn’t sure what else to do. The upside was that I did very well, graduating with a 3.98 GPA. I’m currently in my second semester of law school on a scholarship. I’ve also managed to stay in decent shape, and I’m not unattractive. Periodically, a girl will try to talk to me, and I’ll sense she’s attracted, but it’s so awkward that I’ll clamp up and run off as soon as possible.

Fundamentally, I remain isolated and depressed, and the feelings are just getting worse. If something requires immediate attention, the stress will override my depression, and I can focus well enough to do what I have to. But if there’s any slack in time, I’m generally so lonely and gloomy that I’ll shut down and accomplish little until I absolutely must. I’ll mindlessly surf the internet, wander around my apartment, go on very long walks, etc. My first semester in law school was a success, but I’m worried that I’ll start slipping if my mood doesn’t improve.

Looking back, I understand that my mother’s sexual hang-ups and my father’s bitterness stem from problems in their marriage. They’ve both mellowed considerably over the years. I feel like I just need to get over all of the depression, but I long for a connection with someone of the opposite sex, and those feelings seem stupid and immature and hopeless. I still feel pathetic for having an interest in women. I have much to be thankful for, and intellectually I recognize that I’m in a good place in life with lots of opportunities. But the gloominess and depression remain.

I appear to have less direct experience with (or knowledge of) Gothard than most here, but my mother was deeply involved with IBLP before I was born. She attended many seminars and I believe worked for the organization at one point.

For most of my childhood, our family attended a church heavily influenced by R.B. Thieme, J.R., who is similarly awful but less sex-obsessed. However, I was exposed to IBLP literature, and my family attended a taped Gothard seminar when I was 13 or so. Looking back, I think a lot of my mother’s weirdness about sex came from Gothard and his Taliban-esque attitudes about dating, dress, entertainment, etc.

While I moved away from Christianity several years back, I recognize that conservative sexual values don’t necessarily equal repression and guilt. One can believe in premarital abstinence and family values without obsessing over “eye traps,” fleeing anything slightly sexually suggestive, "guarding your mind" to a point where you hate youreslf for being sexual, etc. That obsessiveness only makes you think more about sex, from what I’ve observed, and the guilt is useful only to those who want to enslave and control us.