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I've never seen a self-help article aimed at pedophiles, so maybe it's time for one. I don't know how easy it is to predict who will grow up happy or unhappy. It's a movie cliché to see the student government president, football star, or head cheerleader grow up and remember their best days as being in high school. Equally a cliché is the bullied nerd who grows up to be rich and successful. Is that really how it works, or are most people about as happy as they were as teenagers? I don't know.
It's strange to look back on yourself as a child, but if I'm honest with myself, I really was an arrogant, bookish nerd, and yes, I was bullied. Even beyond that, though, there were a lot of reasons to think I might lead an unhappy life.
For one thing, I was a bit antisocial. Of course, "arrogant bookish nerds" (as I identify my former self) often lead more solitary lives. It turns out people can change a lot from their teenage years to adulthood, and I'm no exception—I'm nothing like I was—but at the time, I didn't have a lot of good friends and was often made fun of by my peers. I wasn't particularly close to my family, and I was rather lonely, although I justified my loneliness by telling myself that I didn't want to be friends with others. My fun was often solitary: reading, video games (especially story-based puzzle games), and TV (especially Star Trek) were among my main activities.
But the headline feature of my life was not about being lonely. It was, of course, about being a pedophile. It was about not being able to share my true desires with anyone; watching jealously as people in my grade started dating and I could not; and endless messages from the media explaining how everyone like me is a monster. It's about knowing that almost everyone I knew would likely hate me if they knew my sexual desires. As an exclusive pedophile, whose only sexual interest is in children, it's about believing I would never be able to marry, have a family, or lead a "normal" life.
That is, really, the question. Can someone like me be happy? Or are we doomed to lives of isolation and sadness?
There's a danger in drawing too much of a line between the LGBTQ community and the pedophile community. Unlike gays and lesbians, I don't believe the path for us is legalization of sexual acts. In our case, love is not love is not love...
But we are also a sexual minority that faces discrimination, and in that, there is much in common between pedophiles and gays. I can attest to that personally. Coming of age stories about gay men always affect me deeply; I hear their isolation and I see in it a mirror of my own journey. I remember hearing someone describe their difficulty finding a path on a podcast once: "Heterosexuals have all these little plans laid out for them that they don't even realize it's like an example for their life. They just understand it as that's what culture is." I couldn't help feeling like he was speaking for me and for all of my online friends. And yet, I also couldn't help my reply: "You have no idea how lucky you are."
Despite marriage equality and a broader acceptance of gay sex, rates of depression and suicide among gay men [remain higher](https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gay-loneliness/) than in the general population. (As an aside, that article is very good; I highly recommend it.) It's deeply frustrating that the gap remains, but it also indicates something fundamental: maybe sex isn't the key to happiness.
Depending on your age and experiences, your interpretation of that sentence will be very different. Some people will read it and say, "of course sex isn't the key to happiness, it never was." Many self-aware adult heterosexuals believe that sex can't truly make you happy. Others, though, feel it as a powerful driving force, necessary to pleasure. And even more see it as the key to a fulfilling relationship, maybe the only way to find one.
The role of sex in happiness is interesting, and complex, and probably there's no agreement to be found. The truth is probably somewhere in between. You can be happy without sex, but sex can help make your path to happiness easier. As usual, it's something of a grey area.
Enter into almost any online pedophile community, and the people you'll find are as varied as anywhere else. Outgoing and shy, highly educated and not, doing virtually every job imaginable, happy and unhappy. You can't help a certain nagging feeling, though, that there sure do seem to be more unhappy people, and more lonely people, and more maladjusted people, than you'd otherwise expect.
It wouldn't be surprising. After all, there are plenty of reasons for pedophiles to be unhappy or lonely, ranging from self-hatred to feeling like they can't share their true self, from a lack of sexual partners and deep relationships to a simple sense of hopelessness. "Everything other sexual minorities have, but worse," is one way I might describe it.
That kind of thinking also tends to lead to runaway feedback loops. For example, consider the person who drinks to escape the problems in their life. By drinking, they make those problems worse, causing them to drink more, causing the problems to be worse, and so on. It can be the same with pedophilia: because you're a pedophile, you think you're worthless, or that you'll never have anything good in life. That thought stops you from pursuing good things in life or recognizing good things in life, so your life gets worse. That reinforces the idea that you're worthless, or will never have anything good... and it cycles, and gets worse, and worse, and worse, because you keep focusing on the negative thoughts.
Unhappiness, though, is not inevitable. For one thing, I've been happy for just about all of my life. Lots of other pedophiles are quite happy. We might have more to overcome, but clearly we can overcome it. This attraction is not destiny.
For me, the journey to happiness was almost accidental. It just so happened that I had a strong identity outside of my pedophilia. I was interested in academics, especially math and science. So when it became clear that I couldn't explore my sexual side, I focused on the things I could explore. Instead of defining myself as a pedophile, I defined myself as a nerd. Not exactly the pinnacle of high school achievement, but still something I could be proud of. More importantly, I wanted to become a scientist, so I had something to look forward to in life. Instead of defining myself by what I had available at the moment, I thought about what I might be able to achieve in my future.
I also went to a summer camp that opened me up to friendships with others, and I stopped being so arrogant. I started to realize that I could get a lot of value from knowing other people, and developed friendships that meant a lot to me. I decided that even if I never found a life partner, I could have close friendships that would fill some of the same hole. Although I didn't do any active pursuit at the time, I also never gave up on finding a life partner. I'm even dating someone (who knows about my attraction) right now.
What is it, though, that really helped me to be happy?
I am, fundamentally, a skeptic about the kind of self-help or self-realization articles that seem to pop up everywhere online. They're not bad; sometimes reading one helps me reflect on my own life, or what brings me joy. But research in this area is always sketchy, and then it gets filtered through random people telling you how they got happy. Does any of it really apply to me? Can I come to the same happiness without having to rethink everything in my own context?
I don't know. And yet, here I go: sharing my own random, untested ideas about psychology. I'm going to take the plunge, because for me, it's been really important. Besides, I've never seen that self-help article for pedophiles, so maybe it's time for an entry into the genre.
What's my personal pet theory? Well, any article in the life hacking, self-help genre (LHSHG) starts with a simple statement that is hard to disagree with, to help you get on board with the idea. Once you're drawn in, a good LHSHG article says something that feels like a natural extension, something that's not really tested but sounds pretty good. Of course, that's when you start to leave the land of "I know this for sure" and venture into "just some random internet person's opinion."
So why am I [lampshading](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging) this writing style so much? Because I don't want to pretend like I have all the answers. This is my opinion, my own personal LHSHG article, and I don't want you to think I have to be right. If you're a pedophile, I don't want you to take my word for it. I just want you to think about it, because maybe it will give you a basis for your own decisions.
For me, happiness is too broad a concept. You can't pin it down with one word; it's not really just one thing. We can do surveys that ask "how happy are you?" but that doesn't come close to getting at all the different things that make someone happy.
Rather, I've found that there are two related concepts underlying happiness: pleasure and fulfillment.
Pleasure is about the immediate things that make life more fun in the moment. I think of video games, reading novels, sports, watching Netflix or YouTube, viewing porn, or hookups for sex. They're fun; they make the moment better. Eating good food might also be here, or playing a board game.
Fulfillment, though, is about building something bigger, creation, the kinds of things that sustain you and give your life purpose. It's accomplishments, relationships, feeling a part of your community. Think of exercise geared towards becoming fitter; deep relationships with friends or family; raising a child; learning a new skill or education in general; doing a research project; writing a novel; helping others or volunteering.
When I think about what I do that brings me happiness, it's a mix, and some things are in both categories. For example, I like to read; that's mostly pleasure. (Occasionally, it's fulfilling to read a good nonfiction book where I feel like I learn something.) I go biking; that is both pleasure (endorphins from exercise) and fulfillment (getting myself into better shape). I tutor a friend's kid in math: that's less about immediate fun and more about the fulfillment of helping someone out. Doing a math problem is a bit of both (because I can enjoy the a-ha moments while also feeling like I'm getting better at math), while doing a Sudoku is just pleasure. My work is not necessarily pleasurable, but it brings me fulfillment. Writing this blog is mostly fulfillment, because I feel like I am making something bigger than myself and helping others, although I get some pleasure when I finally figure out how to write an article well. (This one has gone through at least five different drafts before landing on this format.) I get fulfillment when I post a finished article, when I see view counts, when people send me nice notes or leave comments. (Erm, hint hint?)
There's an old science fiction show that I adore with all its flaws, Babylon 5 (I did say I'm a nerd). There's a lovely quote from it that I still remember, that taught me this lesson at a young age. It's one of those moments where one of the main characters is getting advice about how he tries to do too much himself and should ask for help from his partner. The advice, coming from a visitor, always stuck with me. "You know, before I got married, Emily used to come by sometimes and help me clean out my apartment. Well, I asked her, 'How come you're so eager to help me clean up my place when your place is just as bad?' She said, 'Because cleaning up your place helps me to forget what a mess I've made of mine, and—when I sweep my floor, all I've done is sweep my floor. But when I help you clean up your place, I'm helping you.'
You might reasonably ask why I, as a pedophile, seem to be writing a generic LHSHG article on a site for pedophiles. Shouldn't I share my grand theory with the world on some clickbaity site where maybe I can make a lot of money off of it?
It's because I think this distinction is especially important for people like me.
First of all, it's so easy for a pedophile to confuse their lack of sex with their lack of fulfillment. Relationships, not sex, lead to fulfillment. Of course, sex is not just about hookups, and sex can be an important part of deepening a relationship. Nonetheless, it's still just one piece, and you can have deep relationships even without sex. Sex gives pleasure, but on its own, I don't think it gives fulfillment.
Second, I think unhappy people often seek out pleasure to get happier without also finding fulfillment, and pedophiles often do so to dull the pain in a cycle that builds on itself. Maybe they masturbate too much (definitely all pleasure); maybe they lose themselves in video games; maybe they get into an [unhealthy cycle](https://livingwithpedophilia.wordpress.com/2021/04/27/interview-the-journey-of-leaving-child-pornography/) with actual child pornography.
Knowing the difference between pleasure and fulfillment, and knowing which your life is lacking, can help you seek out the one that will truly help you build towards more happiness. Or so I say in my own little LHSHG article!
It probably needs to be said that finding a spouse is the major source of fulfillment for most people. It's someone in your corner, how you raise a family, and more. It's the roadmap for heterosexuals that guy was talking about in my podcast. Yet finding a spouse is much harder for people like me, especially if it's important to you that you can be fully open and honest together.
If you're not a pedophile, it can be hard to understand just how big a deal this is. At first glance, I see someone with a spouse and access to sex as living an unimaginably good life. And yet people cheat on their spouses; they find families unfulfilling; their jobs feel like dead ends. They divorce. Pedophiles see the "greener grass" on the other side, without realizing all the problems people have, all the challenges they face in life. It leads to an unhealthy mindset, where we see only one thing that can make us happy, and worse, we start identifying our pedophilia as the one and only thing that "ruins" our life. Those views blind us to both the good things in our life and the bad things we might be able to change. We just blame all our unhappiness on being pedophiles. Meanwhile, we have unrealistic views for how happy other people are.
It's not all about finding a partner. Finding a partner is neither necessary for happiness (although it can help), and it's not a magic cure-all. It's great if you find someone. But there are other ways to build great relationships as well, and other ways to be happy. If you fixate on finding a spouse, then you miss out on the very real things you can do to build towards a better life.
Still with me? Then let me end with some concrete ideas. If you're struggling with happiness, maybe you can see a direction to go in here that will help you out. I am not an expert on happiness, but I *am* happy. And if there's something that's worked for you, maybe you can leave it in the comments. I'd love contributions that could serve as advice for others.
So let's wrap up my little LHSHG post!
1) Don't fixate on sex or your pedophilia. Yes, you're a pedophile. Yes, it sucks. But there are lots of things that are good and bad in life. I'm an exclusive pedophile, but I actually prefer my life to many others I might've been born into. Pedophilia doesn't define you, and it doesn't define your happiness. There's a danger in saying "get over it" but... I think that can be an important thing to say.
2) But, you do need to deal with internalized hatredYou need to understand that, no matter what society tells you, you're not a terrible human being just because you were born with certain desires. This is complex; you can't just get rid of internalized hatred as a prerequisite to happiness. It's all interlinked: as your life gets better, as you find more things that bring you joy and express your value as a person, then I think you'll have the tools and presence of mind to get past the internalized hatred too, and then you can get still happier, in a positive feedback loop.
3) Think about what brings you joy. Both pleasure and fulfillment. Music? Jogging? Writing a novel? Hiking? Role playing games? Dancing? Friendships? Career? Volunteering? Education? Cooking? Gardening? Hunting? Fishing? Pets? Puzzles? Movies? Whatever they are, do the things that will be meaningful and fun for you. (Not only fun, but meaningful too.) Do them with other people if you can. I think people really underestimate volunteering and helping other people out.
4) Balance pleasure with fulfillment.You need both, but often fulfillment is harder. Some people can get plenty of pleasure from, say, computer games. It depends on the person, of course; the same old thing can get tiring if overdone. But if you find fulfillment, pleasure can often come easier.
5) Seek connection.Connections to other people are an essential part of being human. It's not just that they bring joy (they do), but in their way they also protect against offending: the more connected you are to others, the more you have a natural inclination to advance everyone's good. That's why I listed things like volunteering (you meet other volunteers, and the people you're helping; you become part of a goal together), role playing games (get a dedicated group of friends), etc. Even writing can be a community thing if you join a writing group or take a class. Feeling like part of the world makes a big difference.
6) Know that this will take time to build. No matter who they are, people can really struggle with being happy. You don't build connections with others quickly. You don't deal with internalized hatred quickly. You can, however, take pleasure in your work and efforts to build that fulfillment. You can look forward to your own improvement. You don't have to get it all right, right away.
7) Think about your personal narrative. Don't make your narrative about your pedophilia, or all the parts of your life that are bad. Make it about the things that can be better, the things you're building towards, the places you want to get. That focuses you on fulfillment. Maybe it even gamifies your life a bit, giving you a jolt of happiness each time you move towards the things you want.
If you find yourself stuck in a runaway feedback loop, recognize it. Realize that your negative thoughts are making your life worse, which causes more negative thoughts. Use a more positive narrative to understand what you're building towards, and, if you can, try to stop focusing on the negative aspects of your life.
8) Finally, separate compansionship from sex. We spend a pretty small amount of time in our lives having sex, but a lot of time pursuing it. It's how we're wired. But a big part of that pursuit isn't even about the sex, it's about the companionship. Sex isn't necessary for a deep emotional connection with friends or even a lifelong partner. Realize that these are different things, and a path towards partnership becomes easier.
So what about finding a partner? Speaking of... I've actually intentionally left this off my suggestions above because it can be hard, or seem hopeless, for exclusive pedophiles. But as I said, it's definitely not impossible. You can have a deep and permanent bond with someone, even a marriage, without having sex with them. It might simply be an asexual partnership, or maybe you find another pedophile to be with. If you're not exclusive, you can find many adults to date and to have sex with (and I will be a bit jealous of you). I'm looking forward to writing more about this later, but my point is simple: it's not essential, and it is possible.
One of the surprising things about the above suggestions is there's actually very little about pedophilia directly. The biggest mistake, I think, is letting pedophilia define your happiness. Obviously it's not the same for everyone; if you have a very high sex drive, it's harder to avoid. But either way, it doesn't change the truth that the human experience goes way beyond sex, and you shouldn't make your life be about the thing you're missing. It should be about the things you have.
Don't worry, I'm just about off my soapbox. But if this has rung true to you... I hope you'll read over that again. I hope you'll think about steps you can take to bring yourself some real happiness. You know why? Because if I help people, that brings me fulfillment. :)
The danger with an LHSHG article is that it can put pressure on people to get better. It sends a message: if you can't achieve your goals after reading this article, then maybe you're just worthless. It's like an accusation: maybe it's all your fault.
That ignores the very real differences between people. It ignores real life financial circumstances, individual personalities, depression stemming from brain chemistry, and so much more. No article can possibly solve unhappiness. All it can do is leave some signposts and give you a direction to go in. That's why I keep making fun of the LHSHG clickbait industrial complex: they promise something that can't be delivered, and I don't want to be that person.
At the same time, I asked at the beginning if someone like me can be happy, and the answer is yes! I'm really happy with my life. I say that not to put pressure on you, not to claim you should do exactly what I did. I say that to give hope to others, especially teenagers, who might be coming across this and wondering what their future looks like. It can be really good. Your mileage may vary, but it can be really good.
I don't know if pedophiles as a group can ever achieve the same levels of happiness as others. Maybe yes, maybe no. But we can do better, and I hope this helps.
You can find the original article, along with reader comments (and the opportunity to leave your own) at Leonard's blog. | |
