David Bowman, LMFT

Psychotherapy, Counseling, and Coaching

Recently I have been delving into the childhood messaging that gay and queer men received from their respective fathers. It struck me how many current maladaptive behaviors have roots in the problem of straight men raising gay boys. I am proud to announce that my new online course and on re-parenting for gay men is now available! Father Figures: Re-fathering for Gay Men consists of 17 online activities that will help you explore your own dad’s (or father substitute’s) messaging, what you expected of him and did not get, and how you can overcome the problem of the missing gay paternal energy by creating your own ideal gay father figure.

Two athletic versions of Icarus, one young man and one older, in flight together

Now available!

Father Figures

An online course in
Refathering for Gay Men

Father Figures is a self-directed course for gay men in reparenting, specifically refathering. For those who lacked nurturing fathers, this course will help you identify what fatherly teaching and support you missed. It will help you create an ideal gay father figure who will provide advice and encouragement.

Visit FatherFigures.info for more information

Coming Soon: Father Figures for Straight Men

David’s Featured Posts

Rethinking Monogamy

In Western society, being straight (heterosexual) and being in a monogamous relationship (with only one romantic partner at a time) have been seen as the "normal" or ideal ways to live. Because of this, even when same-sex or gender-fluid relationships are accepted,...

A Story of Addiction and Recovery

Addiction is a kind of runaway train that leaves the station when we stop dealing with our emotions, stop living our fullest lives, and stop wanting to cope with whatever life throws at us. Addiction is a kind of vacation from life that eventually becomes the Vacation...

True Self/False Self

Life seems to get more complicated by the hour these days. Modern life, plugged as it is into a 24/7 news cycle, calls (more like demands) us to respond and in doing so to choose between one version of ourselves or another at a moment’s notice. Even in home life, we...

Sons and Fathers

Many men have issues with their fathers. Dozens of books have been written on the way that mid-century North American male culture de-emphasized emotional relationships between fathers and sons, and instead focused on competition, stoicism, and independence. As a...

Love the Second Time Around

From Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” “All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes, whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no...

Lessons from Long-term Sobriety

“Relapse is part of recovery,” goes the saying. Not that we welcome relapse, but it happens. For myself and for many others, a relapse after a years-long period of sobriety is a very different affair from our initial climb out of the world of substances. At this later...