Disclaimer: like most pedophiles, I have never approached a child with anything sexual or otherwise inapporpriate, and I don’t plan ever to do so. I recognize the harm in such actions, and I don’t want to hurt the very people I love. If you expect AMA with a child molester, this ain’t it.
The account is a throwaway, hope you’ll understand this decision given the sensitivity of the topic.
Edit: Thank you for keeping civil and genuine in your questions. I did envision hostility, yet here you are, amazing as always. Lemmy is a wonderful place to be, thanks to you all!
Edit 2: Apparently we have another brave pedophile here in the comments, and he came with a good note I should include in the post: if you find yourself attracted to minors, that’s okay. Acting on your desires is dangerous, but having them isn’t. If you’d like to have some support and/or community that would help you get your bearings or just listen without any prejudice (we’re all in the same boat), there are places that can help you. Visit VirPed (18+) or MAP Support Club (13+; scroll down for details), or refer to other resources through the MAP Resources website.
How has this impacted your relationships with your partners? How do you go about having “the talk?” Do you consider yourself a strict pedophile, or perhaps hebephilic/ephebephilic? Exclusive? How has this affected your life generally and mental health specifically? Have you ever been outed?
I was out to my long-term partners, and the effect was, as you would expect, always negative, although always on a softer side, like partners getting more irritable and bitter with anything regarding children when I’m around. Sure enough, parenting question was off the table.
I had different approaches to “the talk”, from straight up saying “I’m a pedophile” and managing reactions to going carefully and mentioning I like children in a special way, but never had the active intent to do something due to it. The latter works better, but doesn’t solve everything.
I’m exclusive for boys (pedo range) and non-exclusive for girls (pedo to teleio range, although less hebe, those moody brats are freaking me out :D).
Pedophilia in itself doesn’t have much impact on me besides being a great help when someone needs me to take kids out of adult table for evening talks (I much prefer children company anyways). The societal attitudes, however, added a lot of mental strain indeed. I’m still very much unsure if I’ll ever be able to pull off such thing as a family due to how my partner might react (and I feel very uncomfortable and threatened keeping it inside from a person who would rightfully be extremely angry should they find out the father of their kids is a pedophile), and family is the most valuable thing and the highest priority I have in life. I also hate that I have to be generally reserved and not participate in a lot of things (like, idk, assisting in a child summer camps or educational groups for children or whatnot), because this can also be seen very negatively by my future partner (as seen by past partners being uncomfortable with the idea).
Aside from that, I hate keeping it behind closed doors and it hurts a lot when people say something like “all those pedophiles deserve to die” or comparing pedophiles to child molesters without me being able to say much against it or at least direct them to the goddamn Wikipedia. And it happens A LOT.
Luckily, I have never been outed, and can’t speak for that experience.
Not OP, but also a pedophile. Well, because of my religion I ended up marrying a woman. That was a mistake. I was never out to her, and I’m not now. We broke up, and my current boyfriend does know. I don’t think I’ll ever be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know and can’t be at least somewhat comfortable with it again.
I’m not just a pedophile. Minor Attracted Person “MAP” or Youth Attracted Person “YAP” are more applicable. I’m a pedophile, a hebephile, an ephebophile and in some cases a teleiophile and a nepiophile. I don’t consider myself truly exclusive, though I am more exclusive than I want to be.
I’ve never been outed, but I have come out to just over a dozen friends. That’s gone well except in one case where two friends who are a couple chose to cut me off.