Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how Let's go. Hey man, thank you for listening to today's episode about porn and third culture kids with my friend, john Kilmer.

Speaker 1: 0:26

If you grew up in a missionary family or a military family, or if you just grew up amidst different cultures, if you grew up in a place where you didn't fully belong but you also didn't fully belong elsewhere, then this episode might really resonate with you. It's about third culture kids, in other words, the experience of growing up between worlds. We're going to talk about what that's like. Even if you have never heard of this term before, you're going to learn a little bit about it and how it can set you up to struggle sexually with pornography and what it looks like to heal as an adult, and you'll hear some beautiful reflections on embracing the gifts of being a third culture man. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to Husband Material. Today I am hanging out with my friend and fellow certified husband, material coach and mental health life coach, john Kilmer. Welcome to Husband Material.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Thank you, drew. I am so excited to be here and a little nervous too. I'm actually doing a podcast with the Drew Boa, so thank you for having me. You're welcome.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Yeah, Today we are talking about third culture kids. What is a third culture kid?

Speaker 2: 1:48

Wow. What is a third culture kid? There are several definitions. I will give you my definition and I'm happy to read a definition a little later. But my definition of a third culture kid is a person who has grown up among several different cultures and does not quite feel a part of any one culture, but also feels a part of all the cultures And a lot of the commonalities that third culture kids experience is a feeling of affinity toward other people who have grown up that way.

Speaker 1: 2:28

John, how did you grow up between worlds?

Speaker 2: 2:32

Thank you for asking that, and I was trying to think back in preparation for this podcast about how many places I moved in a few years, like from the time I was born to the time I was 14. And I'm thinking it was about nine times that I moved. So that was a lot. So I was born in the state of Oregon and when I was about three we moved to another town in Oregon And then from there we moved to the country of Lebanon. My parents were missionaries and we lived near the city of Beirut, lebanon, and I have a lot of fond memories of living there.

Speaker 2: 3:23

I remember, wow, all of the roofs in Lebanon were flat on top and there was fighting going on like all the time between the warring factions there, and yet I felt safe because it was so normal. I remember standing with my family up on top. Where we lived was up on a hill up on top of our roof, looking down on 4th of July and seeing rockets going down into the city And we were like fireworks it's 4th of July And here we're in this country, another country. So we lived there for about two years and then the social and civic unrest became so bad that my parents realized we needed to move And we spent 10 days in a bomb shelter before we moved. And wow, was that ever? Like my parents were so good about not instilling fear in us? I thought it was the best thing in the world. I got to see my friends 24-7, and we got to play games together and stack all these mattresses up against the wall and jump on them.

Speaker 2: 4:33

So we moved back to Michigan after that. So by then I was eight, and then we stayed in Michigan for a year while my dad got some further missions training And then we moved to the country of Kenya in East Africa, and that's kind of the culture that I really bonded with, and you'll find among third culture kids that, no matter how many times they've moved, there was a certain formative time where they really can pinpoint wow, this is where I felt like I belonged in a number of ways And I really bonded with this culture, whatever it may be. So we lived in Kenya for six years and I was 14 when we moved back to Michigan And then from Michigan after one year we moved clear across the US to the state of Washington, which is where I live now. So a lot of moves and a lot of time And thankfully I was in high school for four years at the same high school.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Man. I resonate with that. It describes me, having grown up between Puerto Rico, Mexico, United States and Canada, And it also describes you.

Speaker 2: 5:44

Oh, wow, drew, like just hearing you saying those places fills me both at the same time with excitement and with anxiety on your behalf, knowing what those moves must have been like and I resonate with it in my soul so much, and with sadness in the thinking of the leaving of the places you may have been bonded to. So there's such a mixture of emotions.

Speaker 1: 6:15

For third culture kids, or TCKs as we like to be called, There is, and especially when I moved at 13 years old, right in the middle of puberty, with all of these unprocessed emotions. This is one of the main contributors to my sexual struggles with porn and fantasy and just the stunting of my development During that time. Wow, yeah, i remember going to my parents asking them do you have any books on moving for kids? like to help us get through this, because I'm struggling, i'm suffering over here And there was nothing, at least nothing that we knew about.

Speaker 2: 7:02

Wow, but that you actually had the foresight to ask for that is amazing. I don't even think I have the language to ask for a book, nor was there one when I needed one. There is one now. It's actually kind of an oldie but a goodie. It was published in 1999 and then republished a year or two later and it is called Third Culture Kids And it's by Ruth, then reckon and David Pollock, and they researched, they did tons of interviews with Third Culture Kids and they researched commonalities among all of these people who have grown up among worlds In fact, the title of the book says the experience of growing up among worlds And I so resonate with that.

Speaker 2: 7:57

And they compiled a lot of research And what it has done for me. I have to say I cried a great deal reading this book. I shed a lot of tears because what it did for me is it gave me language to express my feelings and help me realize that I wasn't alone in my feelings because I had felt so alone. And what you say about moving during puberty like puberty is super disorienting, as it is, no matter how stable of a whole life we have, no matter whether we've been like living on a farm forever and our ancestors lived there and we're going to live there until we die. It's really destabilizing. And then to move right in the middle of that and I experienced that too, man I was 14 when we moved from East Africa the country of Kenya, back to the United States, to Michigan, and it was really rough.

Speaker 1: 9:00

John, what would you like to say to someone who's listening to this and wondering if maybe this idea of being a Third Culture Kid might describe them?

Speaker 2: 9:10

It probably does, and if this is new information to you, dig into it, start researching it, start journaling about it. There's community out there for you, there's language out there for you. Grab the book, start reading it. Third culture kids are often missionary kids, military brats or other government officials that have gone abroad for many years. But the term Third Culture Kid wow, that can be moving across the United States. Think about the cultural difference between Alabama and Oregon, for example, or Rhode Island and Texas. I mean it's huge, it's absolutely huge, and so, even though I've talked a lot about my experience of growing up overseas and feeling like a full mixture of cultures within myself, there's also this aspect of just moving to another state. It can be a really, really traumatic thing And, moreover, multiple moves within short periods of time can be so difficult.

Speaker 1: 10:38

John, as you were going through these moves as a teenager, how did they affect your sexuality?

Speaker 2: 10:46

Yeah, that's something I've given a lot of thought to, drew. I was a late bloomer as far as hitting puberty, so when I was young the moves didn't affect me as much. I think young children are still very insular in their family experience. They're still very focused inward and focused on siblings and parents. But as I got older and we moved and friends were becoming a big part of my life, the moves became more traumatic.

Speaker 2: 11:21

And that moved from East Africa where I had other missionary friends. I had African friends there. I loved the country of Kenya. We lived in the highlands, near the tea plantations and the coffee plantations And it was very green there, equatorial, and I bonded with that culture and the people and my friends and connections there so deeply that it was deeply painful to leave And unfortunately there was no language in our family to process that. It was just like, oh, i mean I kept a journal way back then And I was looking at it the other day and I just I just wrote one line about leaving And I just said I guess we are over and done with Kenya Period And just that one line said volumes And there was no place to talk about it. So when we moved to Michigan.

Speaker 2: 12:25

I was 14, still had not hit puberty, but I was beginning to notice that other guys in my class their voice was deepening, they were getting taller, they were manifesting secondary sexual characteristics And I wanted that so bad because they looked so at home in their bodies And I envy that. Part of my story also is that I was born with a cleft lip And so I had felt different from and separate from from the time of my birth practically, and we could do a whole podcast on birth trauma And sometimes I'd love to do that with you. But there was a feeling of separateness, both culturally and then with envying the way that other guys in my classroom looked and the piece with them being so at home in their body and me feeling so not at home in my own body I still felt like I was in a little boy body at the age of 14 was is really really part of my story. That is so poignant. And I did not hit puberty, truly, i'm guessing. Until the beginning of 10th grade I thought it would never happen. I was certain God had passed me by, i would, i was getting a state in this little boy body forever And that was traumatic and difficult for me And what it set up within me as a sense of envy toward guys that I thought had it all together. And so my peers who, especially in high school, like the seniors in high school when I was in ninth grade, or even my peers in my class I remember one guy he was like growing a full beard in like 10th grade and my voice was barely changing And like wow, and he had a lot of attention from the girls. I'm like if I could just be like him, i would feel okay about myself. And so a sexualized envy begin to develop And I began to develop same-gender attractions And I didn't have any language to understand what it was all about. But it was very, very much related to my sense of trauma from moving. And every time we would move it's like I would kind of go inside myself a little bit more and become more protective and more guarded.

Speaker 2: 15:01

And I remember just really basic thing is coming back to the United States because I grew up in a fairly conservative church tradition And so even when I was young, very young, and we lived in Oregon before we moved overseas, we didn't have a television And my mom was careful about really exposing us to a lot of pop culture And I appreciate that now I'm not particularly into pop culture. But to this day, if I'm with a group of people and they're starting to talk about something in pop culture or something that was popular when I was growing up and I most likely don't really know about it And I've learned to cover pretty well for that I just smile and nod And I really hope they don't ask me any questions about it, because there's this fear of being discovered. And so I came back. We came to the US at age 14.

Speaker 2: 16:00

I didn't know who the Brady Bunch was. I didn't know who Mr Rogers was. It was just some really big cultural icons. I did not know. And it talked about a fish out of water. Yeah, it was pretty traumatic.

Speaker 1: 16:15

There's this ambiguity in being a third culture kid. I think Ruth Fenraking calls it being an invisible immigrant Right.

Speaker 2: 16:25

And they're in such a challenge because I had an American accent, i looked like an American but I didn't feel like it inside And there were so many times that I almost wished I had a different color of skin or a different accent so that I had license to be who I felt myself to be inside.

Speaker 2: 16:49

There is a really poignant video out there about a group or a family who worked in Papua New Guinea with a tribal group of people And when they moved back it shows a picture of their son, who was like a teenager at the time, probably late teens And it shows him standing in the middle of a school courtyard high school courtyard in full Papua New Guinea warrior outfit, with the feathers and the clothes and everything, and all these kids walking around him with cameras taking pictures, whispering, laughing, and then it shows him as he really was, dressed, as a normal American kid. But it kept going back and forth between these two images, as if it was showing who he felt himself to be inside versus what he looked like on the outside. And wow, that really describes the hidden immigrant aspect.

Speaker 1: 17:52

What's it like to be a third culture kid?

Speaker 2: 17:54

Exciting, lonely, scary, delicious There are so many ways to describe the experience. I mean I love adventure and I love traveling. It's been said that third culture kids feel the most at home on an airplane traveling to some place or coming from some place. So it only makes sense that I would have married somebody out of my own culture, and I did. I married a Norwegian. We are going to be traveling there in a month or two to visit her family And I can't wait. I just love adventure. I love seeing new places. I get to go to Denmark. I've never been there. I get to go there this trip.

Speaker 2: 18:47

So there's a sense of adventure and also a sense of lostness And they're both poignantly intermixed. And so you know my parents looking back, they see the difficulty. They really weren't aware of it at the time, but they see the difficulty that it caused in my life And they have asked me several times should we have not taken you? You know, basically, did we do? right now, you And I always answer very affirmatively that I would never have chosen to grow up any other way. I mean my worldview has been expanded exponentially, my sense of cultures and how they work, and my sense of self. I mean, it's a treasure. I value that, and with it comes a profound sense of disrelatedness because I can't quite feel at home anywhere. And even saying that, i feel the emotions come up. So I can feel at home both everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time.

Speaker 1: 19:58

And for many of us who didn't even know that we were third culture kids, there's a lot that we never processed. There's grief, there's unacknowledged loss, and grief and loss can so easily become sexualized.

Speaker 2: 20:19

No, kidding, yeah. So I was reading in the book Third Culture Kids, the experience of growing up among worlds, and also listening to a interview with Ruth and Reckon, and for a while I was like a drowning man reading this information and just like, oh yes, i resonate with that. So much In fact, this book is doggiered and underlined and starred in so many places I could randomly open it up which I could do during this podcast and read something and tell you how it resonates directly with my story. And anyway, she was describing how there's geographical displacement that is like knitted to our psyche and our soul in such a deep way. And she said it may be something as simple as missing the way the stars looked at night where you used to live.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Oh man, drew, when I heard that, i burst out crying and I couldn't stop. I was just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing because I missed Africa so much. I missed the way the moon rose above the acacia trees. I missed hearing the superb starlings singing at night when the moon was full. They would sing through the night. I missed seeing the giraffes twisting their lawn necks together. I miss going on safari and having the baboons break into our tent and get our food, chasing them away.

Speaker 2: 21:58

There's so many things I missed and there had been nobody to talk about it with nobody. And that's why the sense of belonging between third culture kids is really in relating to others who have experienced the same thing. And for me, my sexuality has been deeply connected with my sense of grief and loss. And doubled with that was my sense of grief and loss associated with not growing into a man like I thought I was supposed to be at the right time And not really being told that it would happen eventually and that was kind of normal. So there was all of that intertwined together in such a confusing mass and nowhere to expose it or talk about it or be resonated with.

Speaker 1: 22:48

When did things start to change for you?

Speaker 2: 22:51

Good question. Slowly, ever so slowly, i'm going to say probably my senior year in high school. So I've been going to the same school for four years But finally in my senior year I was like a turtle, cautiously poking his head out of his shell, saying is it okay, is it safe to be here? Do I belong? And that feeling of desiring to venture out and to risk relationship continued in college And I made some really good friends in college and felt like I connected. And, interestingly, i was always connecting with those who felt a bit of a misfit themselves for some reason, because I felt like I belonged with them. They weren't putting on errors and trying to be somebody that always like made me really nervous. Those who were like the cool kids made me really nervous to be around.

Speaker 2: 23:54

So but I made, i made some good connections in college, but by then my sexuality was very deeply hidden. My secret desires for pornography, discovered pornography before the internet And then when it hit, it was it was very compelling to me And my desires to look like a certain guy, because then I would feel okay about myself. That was a really strong issue with me. And so I I was this friendly, happy person on the outside and living a duplicitous life of confusion and brokenness on the inside, and that went all the way through college. And I would say that I, when I first, when I got out of college, i had a really good young adult group I hung out with and that was very healing for me as well. But I realized that there's no way that I was anywhere near ready for a relationship. And when I first started dating a girl fairly seriously, i was in my 30s And I remember driving past a bridal shop and seeing these bridal gowns in the window and realizing, oh my goodness, she is probably expecting that we might get married someday Instantly.

Speaker 2: 25:28

I was that 14 year old boy. My trauma hit me. I was like there is no way I can be the man here And here I was in a 30 something year old body. There is no way I could do that. So I freaked out And that was what sent me to counseling. I'm like there's something really wrong inside me and something really broken, and it took me a long time to trust my therapist that once I did, he helped me open the flood gates of grief and drew for a whole year I cried. I thought it was my new normal. There was so much pent up sadness in me from those years of loss with nobody to talk about it with. I'm very grateful.

Speaker 2: 26:24

I had a job where I actually went to see clients in their home for therapy occupational therapy And I worked in a very rural area, so sometimes it would be 50 miles between my clients. So what would I do? I'd get in the car and I would cry all the way to their house. I would dry my tears, i would go in to my occupational therapy treatment, i'd get back in the car and I would start crying all the way to the next house. It was crazy. I thought I was going crazy and several times I actually thought I needed to be hospitalized for mental health issues, and God just sustained me through it.

Speaker 2: 27:07

It's like every time I felt like I was completely out of control with my grief. He helped me, through my therapist and others, to recognize. You know what This is needed. You need to feel these feelings And there was so much goodness in that. I got to the point where I'd go into my therapist's office and just start crying right in front of them and I would say I love these tears. I would just be wiping my cheeks, they'd be so wet with tears and I'd say I love these tears. They mean I'm alive and I'm in touch with my heart. And so the value of feeling my feelings and putting a name to my feelings and experiencing my losses yet again, this time in the context of community. Right, because I was alone before, but now I was experiencing my losses and the grief and being resonated with in the context of community, and that made all the difference.

Speaker 1: 28:06

Feel it to heal it.

Speaker 2: 28:08

Oh man, you got it. So true, so true.

Speaker 1: 28:13

I hear you saying that we need to find a place where we can talk about it. We need to feel these things, we need to learn so that we can put words to our experience and release some of what we've carried.

Speaker 2: 28:32

Yes, so vital. And I think the hook of porn for those of us who are third culture kids is one of control. Think about it. I mean, there was so many things I had no control over. I didn't have control over my parents deciding to move us. I didn't have control over where we would move or who we would be neighbors with, or the timing of any of that, and so pornography gave me a false sense of control. I can fantasize about this image. I can be in control. I can find something that really does it for me because I'm the one in control of this situation, and so it's like a sense of trying to get that control back where I felt out of control and completely out of it in a cultural context. So it's very connected. The two are very connected, yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:37

For me, porn provided an escape where I felt trapped and powerless. It was my way out of this world.

Speaker 2: 29:50

Yes, yes, wow. It's interesting that you would say that because for years after we moved back to the United States, i would have a fantasy, a recurring fantasy, that I was watching a movie of myself. I was watching a movie of my life And in the movie I was the cool guy Like even though I was definitely a third culture kid in the movie and we were moving around all the time and everything, like I somehow had it together more than I felt like I did inside.

Speaker 1: 30:23

Yeah, Wow, and that was a sexual fantasy.

Speaker 2: 30:27

No it was just a fantasy about me, you know, going to a new school or Being at a new house or whatever, and that the different things I did. It wasn't sexualized yet, but it was about Watching myself on a screen because it was too painful to live in my own body.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 30:48

You know I wanted to read a quote from Um. Third culture kids the experience of growing up among worlds.

Speaker 2: 30:55

I could read you so many quotes and we could talk about this forever. This really spoke to me. It's about our parents And You know, while we were struggling to survive, they were too. It says parents who are focusing on their own survival Often forget to take time to read to their children, to stop to pick them up or to sit on the floor with them For a few minutes, as they had in the past. Children wonder what happened.

Speaker 2: 31:32

The insecurity of each family member contributes to everyone's chaos. Family conflicts seem to occur for the smallest reason over issues that never mattered before. The Enormous change between how the old and the new Communities take care of the everyday aspects of life banking, buying food, cooking can create intense Stress. To make matters worse, we may be scolded for doing something in the new place that was routine in the old one. A Severe loss of self-esteem sets in during this transition stage. Even if we physically look like adults, emotionally We feel like children. Wow, that's my story, and That really is where I believe a deep sense of shame set in. For me was I Don't know the rules. Here, in fact, there's three statements that kind of ran my life. It was I don't know what to do. I Should know what to do, so there's a double bind right there. I should know what to do, and yet I don't know what to do and there's no one to show me how. Thank you for resonating with that.

Speaker 1: 32:58

Yeah, you're welcome. That does resonate and You shared with me. There are times when you feel that way today.

Speaker 2: 33:04

Oh, Ah, so much, so much, and I can feel the old triggers. When that happens, i don't know what to do. I should know what to do. So, because I don't know what to do, but I should know what to do, i can't ask for help. Right, that's the old me talking. And I can't ask for help anyway because there's no one to show me how. So I have to figure it out on my own, and So I'll make a step, and if I make a faulty step, i'll be shamed for it.

Speaker 2: 33:35

So it's really a place of freeze. You know, fight, flight or freeze, it's a place of frozen. It's just wondering, am I safe here? Just talking about it brings up so much in my body, drew as I recognize, you know, the level of healing I've experienced and yet how those trauma wounds are still there And they, we can tap into them, you know.

Speaker 1: 34:02

Yeah, yeah, john, we've talked about growing up as third culture kids. What about being a third culture man?

Speaker 2: 34:16

I love being a third culture man because I Feel like I can relate to so many people in a variety of different ways. I Guess it could be said that I know a little bit about a lot of things, and in fact there's another quote in the book that I was just looking at a little bit ago, and it said that Third culture kids who use their experience as well will notice that they have a deeper sense of compassion for other people, that they have a deeper sense of. You know, we're not necessarily pointing the finger at somebody who has odd behavior and saying they are really out of it, why are they acting that way? But we have a sense of realizing that you know what. There's probably more to the story here And let's just sit with it a while and learn about it and be curious.

Speaker 2: 35:15

And so part of being a third culture kid for me has been that cultivation of curiosity, which I know as a big value of yours on husband material, and It resonates with me so much because it's like oh, in fact I just saw a person today that was very hyper religious in their speech. Everything Had had some religious connotation, everything She said, and I just got really curious about that. It's like I wonder why. So that's one of the advantages of being a third culture man is just Being interested in the world around me, the people around me, and being curious, and I believe I would like to believe I have a little more patience than your average person in an understanding and leaning into people who might be different than me in culture or in Language, or in attitude or dress, whatever the case may be. Variety is the spice of life. That's, that's how I live and that's what I enjoy, and so it has served me well. I'm grateful for my experiences Awesome.

Speaker 1: 36:29

Yeah, me too. Third culture kids Become third culture. Men who have curiosity about the world and compassion for other people, maybe in a little bit of an extra dose and those are the core values that we practice at husband material. We're trying to create a world in the husband material community where men from various backgrounds can feel welcome, can belong, can tell our stories and Can join each other in grieving and also in getting to know the unique beauty and goodness in each one of us.

Speaker 2: 37:10

It is so cool. I love the community drew. In fact, the other day A guy sent me a message in Swahili.

Speaker 1: 37:19

Yes, it was so cool. I'm like, oh man.

Speaker 2: 37:23

Only in husband material, like we are very multicultural and becoming more and more so all the time. It's great. It's great. That makes me happy if this episode is really resonating with you guys.

Speaker 1: 37:36

Please come in the husband material community and tell your story. I think I will, because That's one of the the things about being a third culture kid is I, i'm, i'm, i'm. I've always had to decide how much of myself I'm gonna reveal to someone. In some of these everyday interactions, like when they say where are you from or where'd you grow up, it's like I have to decide if I'm gonna give them the 10 second version or if I'm really gonna do it a little more justice and do the one minute version.

Speaker 2: 38:11

You know but it could be a 10 minute version easily So true, or a 30 minute version.

Speaker 1: 38:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:17

And it's very so. I so relate to that because I tend to be watching for the glaze, the eye glaze and see okay, how short or how long of a version can this person handle, right? So I'll do the short version first and if they say oh, and then ask me a question about it all, oh, maybe I can tell them a little bit more. So, true man, i have really bonded with you in learning your third culture experience. I'm like oh, this is somebody I can relate to.

Speaker 1: 38:50

Thank you, john. I feel the same way. You've unlocked some more curiosity and compassion within me to learn more about how this has affected me, and I hope it does the same for everyone listening, as we maybe tell a little bit more of our stories than we've told before.

Speaker 2: 39:07

Mm. So good, so good. There's so much healing in that.

Speaker 1: 39:11

You've given some great advice about allowing ourselves to feel our feelings, finding safe places to talk about this stuff and also to embrace the gifts that our experiences have given us too. We've also talked about how some of our dysrelatedness can easily prime us for porn, which provides a sense of control and escape. John, what is your favorite thing about freedom from porn?

Speaker 2: 39:43

I love it that you ask that question at the end of every podcast through. Keep asking it because I love hearing the responses from the man. I love being free from porn because there's this sense of wholeness and solidness I feel inside myself. I love looking into the eyes of another person with honesty and truth and clarity and friendliness, not having that thing that I feel I need to hide. it is wonderful to feel that freedom.

Speaker 1: 40:19

Amen, and John, you've not only experienced freedom, you're also working with other men as a coach. Could you say more about that?

Speaker 2: 40:26

I am. I love life coaching and I love walking alongside other men in their journeys, just because I've experienced so much healing by other men walking alongside me and I wanna extend that to other men. So, yes, i'm leading some individual one-on-one coaching as well as group coaching through husband material. And the power of group coaching is amazing because men come together and start to witness each other. in our pain We begin to heal because we see that resonance in the eyes of the other men and there's just something magical that happens when we come out of isolation and allow ourselves to be seen, sometimes for the first time, and to be resonated with. It's beautiful It really is. Thank you so much, john.

Speaker 1: 41:24

You are welcome.

Speaker 2: 41:25

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 41:27

My pleasure. Gentlemen, always remember you are God's beloved Son and you He is well-pleased.