guilt

I can barely remember exactly when I started masturbating, but my earliest recollections are from age 7 or 8, when I would lie on my stomach and press my penis into my cupped hands and thrust. For years I did this and got a "release," but with no ejaculation. I did not know or care, though; I still got an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction from it. My mother might have noticed the wrinkles in my pajamas right at the crotch, where I had been squeezing the flannel, but she never really said anything.

For as long as I can remember, I had always been scared of masturbation. I thought it was morally wrong and disgusting to play with yourself, and plus, I was always scared of getting caught. But then I discovered JackinWorld merely by chance one day and learned it's okay to relieve yourself every once in a while if you need to.

I was about 9 years old when first told and shown about "tossing off" [British slang] by a friend behind the cricket sight-screen at a sports complex that included the tennis courts where both our parents played. He was a year older than I was, and I could not believe what he told me. He also told me babies came out of their mother's tummies. Yuck!

At age 10 I liked to take off all my clothes and make up imaginary stories, fake video games, if you will, that would involve unexplainable acts of "self torture" (nothing painful) and a variety of different places to sit while nude. This went on for a few months. I then discovered that my penis was craving to be touched while I did these acts. I did so starting at about the age of 10 1/2, but didn't do much more. The touch felt good, but I knew a small part was missing.

You mention little about it in your web site, but certainly, men who aren't able to enjoy their masturbation are likely to confuse it with intercourse and subject women to the experience of being masturbation simulators rather than real persons with whom to interact. This is a common infliction of men, especially those who were educated Catholic, which taught that masturbation is sinful. How the church has distorted what should be the natural pleasure of every man is so bizarre, even more bizarre than what they have taught women about the sinfulness of sex.

As an older man who grew up Catholic, I now realize that the church did a major disservice to me, and continues to do the same to young Catholic men (and women) as well as to priests (and nuns). That disservice was to teach me that any expression of my sexuality was a sin unless it was by intercourse with my wife (which no young Catholic male has). Of course I "sinned"!

I've just finished studying at theological college. I found your web site by accident a couple of months ago and I feel like I've come home. At last I've found somewhere where I can be frank and admit to masturbating, and where others are frank enough to admit to it, too. I was also very interested in the recent entry on Catholic masturbation guilt, as I had a similar experience myself. I was fairly carefree about masturbation as a teenager. My mother gave me a "talk" when I was 13. She told me that now I was growing up and I might find that I sometimes "wet myself" in bed.

As an adult male, I'd like to say a few things to those boys and/or young men who struggle and question. As males, masturbation is completely natural and normal. Yes, often "religion" teaches against it; our parents also ignore it. Guys, the fact is that every parent of every boy of a certain age has wondered what was taking him so long in the bathroom. They both know, especially Dad. They probably don't say anything because their son growing up, in the throes of sexual development, and that makes parents uncomfortable. How soon we older people forget.

I am a Catholic priest with over 40 years' experience of a religious vow of celibacy. 30 years ago one of my priest formators was preaching that "masturbation is just as natural as blowing your nose." But I could never quite get my mind around that, having swallowed the official teaching that masturbation was a mortal sin. But just recently a non-catholic friend said to me: "Masturbation is a necessary expression of your masculine sexuality," and something clicked. I thought about it for a bit and could see how masturbating helped me to really live in my body and to own my sexuality.

I started masturbating at about age 14. I learned about it through a family friend, while I was on a trip to Europe. He gave me a lecture about masturbating, and about how everyone did it -- they just didn't talk about it. I didn't know what it was, but I was determined to find out. I searched all over the Internet, but this site wasn't in existence yet. I finally just looked it up in an online dictionary. I was very surprised to find out that I had been missing out on this wonderful experience all of my life.