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I was desperate to talk about this with someone. Could I risk it a second time? The first time I saw a therapist, I was at the lowest period in my life so far.
I was divorcing my wife after ten years of a childless marriage. I initiated the divorce because our marriage was dead. I’d tried to persuade her to see a couples' counselor but she wasn’t interested. She seemed to be happy to let things continue as they were. I wasn’t.
Something compelled me at the very end to be honest about my attractions to little girls with her for the first time. The way that I saw it, she deserved to know the truth about why I was never starry-eyed over her, even at the beginning. It felt more like an asexual and aromantic relationship. I could tell that this had negatively affected her over the years. I only realized many years later that I had been thinking about what I would have wanted in her situation, and not what I expected she would have wanted.
In truth, I was also desperate to talk about this with someone. It’s a part of a cycle for me: acceptance, rejection, suppression. I was in the suppression phase of this cycle, and had been for many years up until this point. Of course, deciding to come out to someone out of desperation is always a terrible idea.
Her initial reaction was anger, not at my pedophilia, but at the fact that I could be thinking that the "pedophile OCD" I had was real. She let me know that she’d experienced this in the past herself.
It took days for me to convince her that I was genuinely attracted to children. There was a lot of sexual molestation in her family, and there never was any in mine. The realization was horrifying for her in a way that was not conceivable to me. I know now how isolating it can be to hold this secret as a partner of a pedophile, but at the time it felt like the ultimate betrayal when she told her entire family about me.
The Worst of Times
The girls of the family did end up finding out, including the one I’d had a crush on for many years. I, of course, never acted upon this crush in any way. This level of vast involuntary exposure left me feeling very weak and insecure. I hated everything about myself at this point, and when my now ex-wife offered to find me a therapist, I accepted. I was scared. I was worried about it ruining my life, but my depression at the time was so severe that I didn’t care. I probably deserved whatever guillotine was about to drop over my neck.
The therapist she found was one that specialized in sex offenders, which is something that we now know is not a great fit for a non-offending map. I was forthright about everything in my first visit. I believe she initially compared me to the main character in the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, which is a story about how a little toy rabbit craves turning in to a real rabbit. I don’t remember the context of this comparison, but looking back, it felt fairly demeaning.
She was less of a warm and empathetic therapist and more of a hardy one, a favorite saying of hers being: 'To make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs'. I know now, everything else aside, that this is not my preferred style. Still, I continued to see her for maybe 3-4 sessions, and to be fair, she did help me a lot with the divorce.
Let loose like a tiger
At my very last session, we were talking about my attractions, and she responded in a hostile way. She was trying to contain it, but it was there. I don’t remember the specifics of what was said, but I do remember how it made me feel. I left and never paid the final bill, and it went to collections.
In one way, I was relieved that I wasn’t reported. There are some therapists out there that absolutely will report you if you admit sexual attractions to children and then state that you are occasionally around them. In another way, I came out more damaged than when I’d went in. Moreso than before, I felt like a lesser being. Isolated. Trapped. Irredeemable. Bad therapy can leave you far worse off, like a botched surgery. I swore to myself that I would never see another therapist again, and the entire experience made me very leery of telling anyone about these attractions for any reason ever again.
The best of times
Slowly, I began to turn this around by focusing on Virped. To help others with these issues and have a community of people that intimately understood what I was going through was extremely healing. I found a new relationship with someone that knew about that aspect of me and accepted it. Things were going much better, despite the damage that was inflicted upon me unintentionally a fairly short time earlier. I was back in the ‘acceptance’ phase of the cycle.
The second time I saw a therapist, most of the world was in a low period. It was during Covid, nearly a decade later.
A close friend of mine mentioned that he went to a therapist that he loved, and I respected him. In many ways, we are similar. Typically, I would have exhaustively researched criteria like their credentials, methodology preferences, and the like. In this case, I decided to go with my friend’s recommendation as a way to try something new.
It took me a long while to get up the nerve to reach out. There were still wounds there, and residual fear.
Finally, I went for it, partly by resolving never to tell her anything about my attractions. I continued to tell myself that I could never ever be safe to talk about any of this with a non-MAP.
A far, far better thing
She was very different. She was so warm. Kind. She always felt like she was in my corner. After the initial rapport building, which came quickly, I remember talking about the type of women I’m attracted to. It was women that were opposite of my ex-wife: compassionate, open-minded, non-judgmental. Because therapists do sometimes have to identify the elephant in the room, I remember that she said that she was all of these things, and asked if I was attracted to her. She then tactfully buffered those words, saying something like, ‘That’s a lot, I know, and I’m sorry, and if you want to run out of the room and never talk to me again I completely understand.’.
I’ve come to learn about the importance of transference and counter-transference, which is when the client projects their feelings about something in their own life on to either the therapist, or when the therapist does this to the patient, respectively. This is something that she was trying to identify and manage, if it was a factor. Looking back, this is something that my first therapist should have self- identified in regard to her hostility toward me. My new therapist addressed it immediately, which absolutely put me at ease. It made feel as though it was quite likely that she would be able to manage counter-transference in the case that I wanted to come out to her.
Recalled to Life
It took a year or two after seeing her every month, but at a certain point, there was a voice in my head that told me that I could trust her with all of this. This immediately scared me. Why should I cook with gas again after severely burning myself, to a point where I sometimes still feel pain from it?
For better or worse, I’ve always had a tendency to force myself in to situations where I face my fear. My new therapist calls this counterphobia. By this time in my life, I was back in to the ‘suppression’ phase for being rejected by the woman mentioned before. I’d booked a double session with my therapist, because I wanted to have the time to properly explain myself.
This was going to be intense.
I felt like I was walking on to a battlefield, though I’d been subconsciously training for a year or two now.
I arrived at her office and sat down, the weight of it all pressing upon me. She felt my mood and did everything she could to make me feel at ease. Finally, I said the words I never thought I would say ever again.
I told her that I was attracted to little girls, but never have and never would act upon it.
Her first words to me were, “I’m so honored that you would trust me with this, and all that I feel toward you is empathy.”
She was still in my corner.
It's been almost two years since that day. I hope with her help that I can stay in the 'acceptance' phase of the cycle.
As difficult as it can be, especially after being damaged by bad theraputic experiences in the past, there are good therapists out there that can help immeasurably. Would you like to know more? Check out virped.org/gethelp. | |
