Guilt over childhood experimentation

Hey, I’m a 22 year old woman. Just to be clear, I am not attracted to kids, I find that absolutely disgusting. I am only attracted to men my age and get a bit grossed out when men a few ages younger than me ask me out. I love working and playing with kids and I've always wanted to become a mom one day. I have never had such a problem before my OCD kicked in. It only kicked in this year so everything is new and frightening to me.

So, when I was a child, I was pretty sexual with myself. I only realized when I reached the age of 14 and 15 that when I was about 3,4 or 5 years old, I was masturbating. I was publicly masturbating up until the age of 7. After that I did it in private. Then once I reached the age of 10, I had lost all interest in masturbation. I stopped for years, up until I reached puberty. I didn’t even know the term till I was 14 years old. My parents used to scold me for touching myself or rubbing myself. They did not explain to me anything. They whacked me really hard too sometimes with canes, just to stop me from touching myself. But I didn’t even know what for.

At that time, I obviously didn’t know what I was doing but I remember thinking that it felt good. That was it. And I couldn't control it. I didn't know what part of my vagina made it feel good, I didn’t know that this was sexual in nature and I didn’t know that this was something that was meant for much older people and adults. I was just very curious. I also realized that I was the only kid who felt this way about their bodies. I was different from everyone because nobody else around my age me knew what I was doing and I was thinking “oh my god, I must be weird because only I can feel “it” and not everyone else”. I used to masturbate in primary school and all the kids would find it weird or funny, thinking there was something wrong with me cause I’d often hump my chair. It was embarrassing.

I think I was about 5 or 6 years old when I also started sexually experimenting with kids my age. I remember experimenting with a cousin who’s a year younger than me. She was my best friend too then. We’d play “mummy and daddy”. Nothing more than just kissing. She'd always play the "daddy" so we'd do this "goodbye" kiss as she "leaves for work".

I also remember wanting to show her how awesome it felt when I touched myself and so I asked her to rub a pillow against herself (she was not naked, we never did stuff like that cause we both thought it was pretty gross) so she can see it for herself. I didn't force her. She thought it was funny, she went “ooh I can be the baby who doesn’t know how to use a pillow!” and we both laughed and moved on from it. I felt a little sad because it just reminded me of how I was the only one. I thought maybe she’d shine some light and go “oh I feel it too!” And the same time, I feel a guilty too, for asking her to do that in the first place. Now that I'm much older, I'm worried that I might have "contaminated" her or something. I have never experimented with anyone after that. After the age of 6, I just grew disgusted with anything sexual in nature. Up until the age of 19 of course, where I lost my virginity.

I didn’t know that this was wrong, I just thought it was just a different form of play time. I have this weird thing about being tickled too. Whenever someone tickled my tummy when I was a child, I often found the urge to touch myself. So I asked my cousin if she could tickle my belly under the blankets because I really wanted to touch myself at that point. I did not ask her to touch me down there. I was 6 years old at the time. She agreed almost instantly and we were laughing as we tickled each other and I slowly slid my hand down and began touching myself, thinking she didn't notice, when I suddenly felt her hand down on my panties too. She squeezed me down there and I immediately stopped it. It felt really weird. We went on playing with our dolls afterwards.

I thought this was something very normal. I thought, “okay, if they can’t feel good like I do, I’m just going to show them or tell them how to feel how I feel and so they can feel good too.” I was just trying to “show them” because I thought that “why should I be the only one who feels good?” I just wanted to sort of “spread the joy” in a way and I’ve been feeling really bad about this.

I didn’t hurt anyone. I know that I didn’t force anyone either. My cousin and I don’t talk much because she’s always busy with school and we’ve drifted apart cause of a family issue that happened between her mum and my mum. But when we meet, we have loads of fun, still. We’d laugh, talk about boys, just have normal girl time. Her mum and I are also in pretty good terms.

I know that it was probably just innocent child sexual experimentation, but I still feel extremely guilty. I’ve been carrying around this guilt for the past few days, weeks. I just wish I could just tell myself that it was really okay and that I do not have to be so harsh on myself because I was literally 4-6 years old at that time. But I’ve been having such a hard time lately. Also, I have OCD. I don’t know if my OCD is making my guilt worse.

Hello, although this topic is a few months old I'm replying because no one else replied yet, and the topic is more common than usually thought. I saw several women talk about it online. Not so many men, and I suppose that's because in little boys "playing with/learning about their peepee" is more socially accepted. When they do it people react with laughther, when girls do it they react with horror. They don't explain what is happening to the child and she grows up with a shame she cannot explain.

I discovered that pressing and rubbing down there feels good I think before I was 6 year old. Maybe it was because of unfulfilled emotional needs, maybe it was just because it feels good. Adults reacted with fear and no understanding. So it wasn't until my twenties that I stopped feeling ashamed and enjoy my sexuality. Now I know I wasn't a perverted or disgusting child. And neither were you. The adults didn't know how to deal with this aspect of a child's development.

Regarding this kind of contact happening between children, I hope you will be able to stop feeling guilty too. It may leave children with confused or uncomfortable feelings but it is very common and also something children must learn about. But often don't because of our culture of shame and fear of our bodies. A child is never guilty or at fault.

I remember that when I was around 5 or 6 it happened that other children showed me their genitals. One girl suggested we take off our pants and put flower leaves on them. With another we looked at our genitals and laughed about them. This was exploration and pure curiosity at what our bodies are like and what they do. This is not adult sexuality and if parents notice that a child is interested, they should explain what our body parts are, that we learn more about them as we grow up, and teach them about privacy, safety and body integrity.

I hope you can see this as a part of life and stop blaming your child self. You can use this knowledge to act better than the adults in the past did, and help children to understand their bodies and learn social boundaries without shame, if they discover it and show interest. Some children do and some don't and everyone should be able to learn about bodies and sexuality at a comfortable pace.

Thanks for reading and I wish you all the best!!