VirPed Panel: 09 December 2024

cute&funny asks;

Has anyone felt like they’re inadequate as an adult and/or having the mind of a child as time continues to age yourself up? If so, would there be a correlation between this and Pedophelia? Does being a man-child affect the way you interact with kids and/or the media you consume concerning kids (eg. affinity towards non-sexual lolishota)? Likewise, does being a pedophile impact your sense of self in terms of how ‘grown up’ you are?

Talking about “Peter Pan syndrome” and “never having completely grown up” is a common theme among pedophiles, and many of us report some sort of childlike self-concept.

I am now well into middle age, but I definitely had this very strongly in the past, and from a very early age too.

Growing up, I had a very split sense of my “true” age identity. When I was a young child I hated being talked down to and really regarded myself as an adult. Adults who met me at 5 years old said it was like talking to a very short 40 year old. Obviously this wasn’t an accurate perception, but I heard these messages and internalised them. However, at the same time, I noticed how people laugh at a kid who talks like an adult and that displeased me. Simultaneously, I was also fascinated with the way younger children than me were not judged or mocked for mistakes and I developed a bit of a desire to get that too.

In retrospect I feel these two apparently contradictory desires were actually the same desire. I felt vulnerable and socially excluded and I wanted a status where that wouldn’t be such a problem. This meant being a high-status adult who was taken seriously when he used long words instead of patronised - or alternatively I could be a wordless infant who had a special protected status and people couldn’t treat me meanly or have any expectations of me. What I didn’t want was that horrible awkward in-between status where you get told how to behave all the time (no autonomy/freedom) and constantly have to strive to please others (no unconditional approval). Growing up is more painful when you don’t naturally behave how the other kids do, because schools are fitted best to the average kid, and the adults around you still haven’t worked out which things about you can and should be changed and which things are inevitable and can’t or needn’t be taught out. Peeing in corners should be taught out at an early age and being left handed needn’t ever be taught out, but there are many less obvious judgement calls for parents and teachers to make. Atypical kids do not spontaneously meet typical expectations and so we run more often into adults and other kids who try to make us be different.

As I got closer to adulthood, of course, I started to realise all the downsides of independence and self-reliance, while starting to forget how inconvenient and stressful it is to be a very small child most of the time, so in reaction my ideal self image started to skew “young” instead of “mature”. I was short and generally physically immature into my early 20s and from around the age of 11, I began to relish and cherish this instead of resent it. It felt like being “the baby” of my peer group was a status I could enjoy. I didn’t really enjoy when signs of adulthood (body hair and facial hair, body odour, ejacuate) appeared. I preferred the neatness of my body.

Despite intellectual acuity and maturity, I definitely also had social skills and emotional display more typical of a pre-pubescent after I passed that age: black and white moral opinions, lots of creative and whimsical ideas, taking people as they came so long as they were nice to me, thoughtless selfishness (forgetting other people’s needs), prone to saying whatever was on my mind, even if it was cringey, or sometimes painful shyness and lack of initiative with other people; crying easily and essaying a need for care, asking for attention non-reciprocally, and always attaching myself to older friends and mentors who had the maturity to tolerate all the above, where a peer would not. By the time I showed up at university my peers were pretty nonplussed by me - although fortunately surprisingly tolerant. None of this was great for my self-esteem, even though a part of me knew I had some ‘right’ in some context somewhere to be taken as I was.

Part of this emotional state was involuntary - I didn’t know how else to be - but as my adolescence wore on I started to be aware of the fact I was seen as immature and use it as a sort of unique identity. I also found that as the stresses of social exclusion and humiliation became more acute in my teens, I experienced very painful nostalgia for being a kid, and wanted to hang out with kids instead. I guess I assumed they would be less judgemental and I would be under less pressure. This was also a sexualised thought.

Over time, the desire to be an adult, and my self-concept as “mature” reversed until I identified more with a childlike sort of inner self. Even so,I was long-practised at mimicking the tropes of adulthood, and so when I needed to I was able to confidently pretend to be a grownup almost more convincingly than my teenaged peers. I could be rumbled by sceptical and wise adults in this (such as my university lecturers, who I don’t think were impressed at all), but most people don’t have time to look that closely.

It’s taken another 20+ years for my developmental and emotional and physical sides to all sync up. Because of my history and sexual preferences, I still have a lot of fantasies about childhood, and always will because they’re habitual. But my self-perception has come more into kilter with what other people see. I now have a more realistic idea of what a grown up is (i.e. not all-knowing nor all-powerful) and what a child is (i.e. actually quite sophisticated and complex). Thus despite much self-doubt, I understand that doubt is intrinsic to being grownup and that complexity is endemic to childhood. I recognise that I have experience and that is what makes me grownup. I don’t resent it any more.

I think all this self-concept stuff really is metaphor, not a true “inner identity”. People with childlike self-concepts I think are making sense of the fact that they can’t do stuff that their peers can do with a fixation on the stereotype of what “being a child” involves - usually a selective one. In reality there isn’t a single kind of child or child experience - children are very different. Not only that but nostalgia misrepresents childhood. It’s full of the same pains of living life as we all have. The fun parts come between.

We all have stereotypes of how children, teenagers, adults act. But like gender roles, these are only a stereotype that conceals diversity. Humans are actors, and we all “act our age” as much as we are our age.

I do link all this to my pedophilia, because my confusion over what agegroup I wanted to be in I think did influence the course of my sexual and romantic desires. However, it’s impossible to say what caused what. Maybe different aspects of my personality reinforced each other and crystallised into this completely non-standard sexual and romantic identity I now have. Being at peace with the imperfection of that situation and acceptance it can’t be magicked away is also, I think, a mark of being grownup.

I will give my own experience, but I want to stress that you will get very different answers depending on who you ask. There is zero evidence that pedophilia is correlated with being an inadequate adult, not being able to relate to adults, having the personality and mindset of a child etc. Many pedophiles are very capable with being an adult and interacting with other adults, and it’s a dangerous assumption that we’re only attracted to kids because we have difficulties relating to adults. We’re pedophiles because we have an unchosen trait: sexual and/or romantic attraction to prepubescent children, which isn’t correlated with any particular personalities.

For me, being autistic plays a part. I’ve never been good with social skills, as a kid I struggled to make friends and I never had an active social life. I also struggled with growing up and never had the confidence of being a proper, independent adult. When I became an adult, I learned that I get on a lot better with kids than most other adults. When I worked as a camp counsellor or volunteered with kids, it was very easy for me to talk to the kids, engage with them etc, whereas I generally struggle doing this with adults unless I already know them very well and I’m comfortable enough to be myself in their presence (which usually means other pedophiles who I’m close friends with). Being in a child’s world is a lot easier for me to deal with, and a lot more fun and rewarding than being in an adult’s world. I could play with them all day and immerse myself in their world.

So it might actually be true for me that my pedophilia is linked to me finding it easier to being around children compared to adults, but I have no idea if it’s just a coincidence, or if being a pedophile caused me to enjoy hanging out with kids more than adults, or vice versa. I also have many fantasies about being a child myself, these fantasies are either physical/sexual or more focused on having a child’s lifestyle, or both. Again, I’m not sure if being a pedophile caused my desire to be a child again, or vice versa, or if the two are completely unrelated.

Again, these are all my personal experiences, and not necessarily true of pedophiles in general.

I personally very much feel like an adult, and don’t feel the need to feel like a child to be peers with other children, or anything similar. I’m simply attracted to children as an adult.

Inadequate? I suppose, but I don’t think it’s in the way you mean. Imposter Syndrome is something that all sorts of people deal with, pedophiles included.

I don’t feel like I have the mind of a child, exactly… but I do feel younger than I am. Or I feel like my body is a lot older and bigger than it ought to be.

I would very much like to physically be/appear like my younger self while retaining my adult intellectual and emotional capacities and my experiences. For me it’s less about an inner feeling and more about my outside not being what I want it to be.

My initial reaction to this question is that I really had nothing to offer in the way of a response. I have never really felt like an eternal child trapped in an adult body, so to speak. But it sounds like the questioner is wondering whether there is some common feeling that pedophiles experience. I don’t think there is. Certainly many do feel more comfortable with kids and can relate to what they’re feeling and how excited they can get at the simplest thing. But on the other hand, they don’t want to lose their ability to function as an adult.

I went through a few phases that make some sense to me, but I can’t say I totally understand. I started feeling pressure as a late teen. Friends were finding girlfriends and drifting away. Hanging out became dating. I just wasn’t interested in girls. At 18, my best friend was 14, and I hung out with his friends. Seems I was more comfortable with their immaturity and they kind of looked up to me. Then, by my mid 30’s, I developed what seemed like an irrational fear of children, Later on in life, I lost that fear and just found I loved being with kids and although I had no physical attraction to say a 3 year old, I’d find them way more fun that an adult. Did I ever feel like an oversized kid? Sometimes, I guess.

As a pedophile, I’m physically attracted to certain children, and personally, I am often drawn towards the company of children over adults in general. I am sometimes drawn to adults with certain childlike characteristics that I also see in myself, though I dislike childish behaviour. I don’t especially enjoy any child-targeted media or interests and generally prefer more mature topics.

I have always been considered mature for my age, even as a child, but I was also unemotional and didn’t connect with people. I struggle to engage with my peers and generally prefer my own company, having only a few friends. I do feel inadequate as an adult in some ways, as if I never grew up properly. There was trauma in my upbringing which almost certainly stunted my emotional development as well.

I do consider it likely that my pedophilia itself is a genetic trait, and the feeling of “never growing up” seems fitting for a pedophile (to the point of being a stereotype), but it’s impossible for me to pick apart everything that influenced who I am. Like every other human, I’m a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors.

I’ve been into ageplay and identified as a little since my late teens, when I didn’t even know what ageplay was. I’m almost 40 and the older I’ve gotten, I feel like I shouldn’t allow myself to be a little anymore. Even though it’s a deep part of me that’s always been there.

I’m a nonbinary person in my late 20s who at different times feels like an autoped, age regressor, ageplayer, childish adult, and other forms of childish self concepts. I used to feel very inadequate as an adult, that has diminished a lot recently and I attribute that to CPTSD treatment and deconstructing a false dichtomy about who I can be. I do still feel very child-like and experience what I consider social and physical age dysphoria tho. I also now just feel like I have adult-like confidence and perspective too.

I’m unsure about whether there’s a positive correlation between being a MAP and a person with a childish self concept, or if it’s that pedophiles who have some kind of childish self concept are more likely to be online and be motivated to engage in MAP spaces more. I could see either. I wish we could have more research about topics like that. I’m not really around many children, but I do love childish content like bluey, hamtaro and kirby. I have a “do I want to be them or be with them” sentiment about boys I don’t think nonchildish maps don’t have, even a tinge of jealousy at times. I easily identify with and show care for children in general, though I’m more comfortable around childish adults. I don’t think being a pedophile affects how grown up I feel mostly, but I’m also nonexclusive. It did a bit in terms of experiences of shame, anxiety that contributed to overwhelm earlier in life.

I sometimes, not always feel like I have a bit of an impostor syndrome. Sort of like with the position and roles I have in life, I sometimes get the question in my head like “how in the absolute world did I get here, doing what I am doing?"

I do not however think this has anything with feeling like a child. I am very comfortable being and feeling like an adult. When I am around kids, I am always the adult, but I do enjoy being with them in their world.

With the next part of the question, I don’t feel like I have anything to add.

With the last part of the question, I don’t really think it does.