Let’s start with the upside. This person has told you this early on in your relationship. They have given you a fair chance to consider how you feel about them being a pedophile.
They have given you permission to ask them more questions.
They have also given you a chance to say, no, this is not for me.
Many partners decide to end the relationship, because it is such a big piece of new information about the person. But not everybody does.
You might wonder why your partner spoke now. Are they:
- dealing with it early on because they felt it was going to come up anyway?
- offering you a way out before things get too serious?
- showing you they trust you completely?
- asking for help from someone who cares about them?
- making it clear they can’t live with pure silence on this topic?
Whatever their reasons are, you will probably be wondering:
- what you actually want or need to know about their sexual feelings for children.
- what it’s appropriate to ask or be curious about.
- how comfortable you are with the topic coming up later, after the initial conversation.
- whether they have done something illegal recently or in the past.
You might also wonder whether this means they are more interested in children than in you.
Some partners have to take time out first to decide whether they can talk about this at all. That’s valid, but bear in mind you can’t avoid the conversation forever if you hope this person will stay in your life. If you pause too long, that creates a lot of suspense and stress for your partner and probably for you too.
If you are instantly sure you would rather end the relationship than continue the conversation, then probably you should do that, rather than draw more information from them. These conversations can be stressful for both the pedophile and the partner. They involve immense risk for the pedophile, which there is no point in taking if the relationship really has no future.
If you want to go forward, the best next step is to talk as openly as you can with them. It is OK to express your fears for them and yourself.
Some things that usually don’t help are:
- sharing their disclosure with other people whom they haven’t chosen to tell.
- you ‘taking control’ by giving opinions or setting unrealistic parameters for the conversation before it starts.
- reaching a conclusion about what needs to be done before you have explored the topic and its implications with them.
- getting too much into conversations about pedophilia in principle instead of how it affects this particular person.
If after the conversation, you want to just be friends with them, or let them go, then you can and should say so.
If after reflection you want to continue as their partner, then the following might be useful:
- our Forum for Friends and Family
- our list of Support resources .
Firstly, thank you for coming to this website to find out more. Whether this news has made you panic or made you thoughtful, we can hopefully give you some perspective on the secret you now know.
Our forum is a peer-support community. We help pedophiles anonymously and honestly discuss their experiences and feelings. We don’t allow image sharing, justification of adult-child sexual contact or encouragement of illegal behavior. Moderators enforce these rules. All posts are written in English.
When people contact Virtuous Pedophiles, the message they write comes to us. The people we hear from most are other virtuous pedophiles. Here are some of the initial messages we have received. Reading them will give a flavor of our diversity, the themes that come up over and over again, and a hint at how many of us there are.
Read about the life experiences of virtuous pedophiles
Our panel of VirPed forum members spent 2024 answering questions about pedophlia-related issues based on their life experiences and answered questions from the curious.