Question for non-exclusve pedophiles

I am a non-exclusive pedophile, and I wanted to know if there is anyway I can decrease my attraction to children or increase my attraction to adults?

Also, would masturbating more or less be more likely to decrease my sexual thoughts involving children?

I have yet to find any, all i can say is try and do what i do and use mainstream porn as an aid to help keep your thoughts focused along adult lines. I find it hard to do myself as mainstream porn does nothing for me but you might have better luck.

Tulula.

I can say that for myself masturbating a lot hasn't cut my sexual thoughts about children, but it has definitely helped me to not follow through on doing anything with them, as I am generally sexually exhausted.

Re-orientation efforts don't work. I'm sorry.

I'm nonexclusive, and I keep a porn program with adult models on my desktop at all times, and run it whenever I'm waiting through commercials on a video. It hasn't had any meaningful impact on the fact that only a handful of adults really do anything for me sexually, and it hasn't made me any less interested in young children.

Re-orientation efforts don't work. I'm sorry.

Sexuality is an extremely complicated thing. If we can reorient a person's sexually, then science doesn't yet know how. However, I don't think you should throw out the idea of developing new sexual interests. I believe it is fully possible, but it may take more than porn to do it.

I don't know that I would have ever considered myself fully exclusive, but in my late teens and early twenties my interest in adults was extremely limited. Children were by far my primary interest. I developed a relationship with a women, partly as an experiment. We actually ended up dating for quiet awhile. She was very kinky and passionate in bed. During the course of that relationship my interest in adults went way up. I'm still a pedophile, but I have developed a much stronger attraction to adults.

I believe it may well be possible for an exclusive pedophile to develop and cultivate an interest in adults, primarily through repeated positive experience over time. I think it takes much more than forcing yourself to look at porn; there needs to be more of an emotional and personal component involved, such as cultivating a passionate relationship with a person you care strongly about.

Today I went to see a psychologist who specializes in paraphilias and has dealt with many pedophiles in the past. I would encourage anyone who has any kind of attraction to adults to take advantage of it and have sex. He has told me that I need to go out and be sexually active in order for my sexual attractions to grow with me. Basically if I stay sexually active, he said I will be much more likely to be attracted to 40 year old men when I'm 40 rather than being stuck on just children and young adults. So I can see where Anigav is coming from. It makes sense

Anigav wrote:

Re-orientation efforts don't work. I'm sorry.

Sexuality is an extremely complicated thing. If we can reorient a person's sexually, then science doesn't yet know how. However, I don't think you should throw out the idea of developing new sexual interests. I believe it is fully possible, but it may take more than porn to do it.

I don't know that I would have ever considered myself fully exclusive, but in my late teens and early twenties my interest in adults was extremely limited. Children were by far my primary interest. I developed a relationship with a women, partly as an experiment. We actually ended up dating for quiet awhile. She was very kinky and passionate in bed. During the course of that relationship my interest in adults went way up. I'm still a pedophile, but I have developed a much stronger attraction to adults.

I believe it may well be possible for an exclusive pedophile to develop and cultivate an interest in adults, primarily through repeated positive experience over time. I think it takes much more than forcing yourself to look at porn; there needs to be more of an emotional and personal component involved, such as cultivating a passionate relationship with a person you care strongly about.

I agree and applaud your efforts. The same is true for me. For the past 10 years I've been convinced I was gay, but I've also cared very much for girls at some points. A lesbian friend of mine and I almost developed into a thing before we both got freaked out and ran in opposite directions because I think the emotional connection wasn't something we were ready for, and I also had a brief stint of making out with one of my friends a few years back. I think the fact I had more experiences with guys and only looked at gay porn might have turned my mind more in that direction, so I recently quit porn and I'm always open to the possibility of being bisexual. The non-experience with girls kind of freaks me out, but I've learned that at least for some of us, sexuality is a fluid and ever-changing thing, and as someone who has been mostly attracted to younger teens over the years, that idea gives me hope.

Emotional component and sexual component of arousal are different things. Love and sex are not the same things. One brain system is responsible for love and other brain system is responsible for sex. In this study was shown that hypothalamus (important component of “sexual” system in the brain) of exclusive pedophiles doesn’t response to erotic image of adults, but response of brain structures responsible for emotional arousal was strong. http://www.nemup.de/PaperNemup/Walter2007.pdf

Case reports about successful reorientation are only anecdotal evidence. In my opinion it is unethical for man with exclusive paraphilia to make reorientation experiments on himself using real adult partners, especially when this reorientation approach has very limited scientific evidence. These experiments can be very harmful. Moreover, what about guys who feel aversion toward woman body? Some men claim that there experiments was successful, while many other men claim that there experiments was not successful and sometimes harmful. We need more credible evidence about sexual reorientation than case reports in order to make confident conclusion.

Moreover, even if effectiveness of reorientation procedure can be proved, I doubt that this procedure will be used in mainstream clinical practice, because change of the adult brain is very hard. For example, there are a lot for scientific studies about treatment amblyopia, in order to cure this condition you need to change visual system of the brain. And scientist understand that in order to do this you need to be very careful. That why there are a lot of preliminary clinical trials, which testing effectiveness and safety of treatment methods of amblyopia. And what’s about “sexual” system? It is more complicated than simple vision system, paraphilia is more complex condition than amblyopia.

I think I'm sceptical of the 'reorientation doesn't work' thing. Reorientation efforts always centre on sexual attraction, but I wonder whether focusing on romantic attraction may yield results. You see, my sexual attraction to little girls has increased as I age, and I think that's because I have becoming more accepting of my romantic attraction to them and my physical type has adapted accordingly. I also have friends who were always into teens and women in their early twenties, but now that they themselves are in their 30s and 40s are more into women in their 30s. I think if I focused on the beauty (in the not exclusively physical sense) of women in their 30s and 40s I could start to find them more physically attractive. After all, feelings like love can change your physical type. But sitting masturbating to porn wouldn't effect any change. Besides, women in porn are mostly 18-early 20s, and if you're a guy in his 40s or 50s then what's the difference between lusting over 12-year-olds and lusting over 18-year-olds; they're all basically kids compared to you.

Regarding changes in general -

Well one thing is certain - if we don't seek any solutions for those who do wish to change then we will surely not find any. I think many will agree, with evidence such as Kirill has posted, that it will certainly not be easy. I'm an optimist in this regard and do think people can change.

I think that a few things will help, but this is just my opinion.

1. That one does know inwardly that any such attraction is not beneficial to either party - oneself and any child. Acceptance of one's attraction, in my view, simply leads down the rocky road for future alterations in belief and possible resulting action. The pro-paedophilic activism that many seem to regard as essential, is so damaging in my view because of this - it does tend to promote all the scenarios that are just so out of step with the rest of mankind. One should be realistic and notice the current trends, which are in no way going the way of those espousing a pro-paedophilic agenda.

2. There has to be a component of care that we feel towards children that will be at odds with any sexual attraction we might feel. Hopefully eventually the former will take over from the latter, but I don't know how one would cultivate it other than being in contact with children, which might be a little more problematic for some. I think it is no coincidence that there is less incest involving biological children than with others.

3. It will be difficult, but if there is no stopping of any fantasising regarding children, whether to images or other ways, then how can progress be made? You don't quench a fire by adding fuel. Some other way of satisfying such feelings has to be found - I don't have any answers here either, apart from the fact that there are a remarkable number of legal young and beautiful images of females available. All 'addictive' behaviour tends to obey much the same rule - the more we do, then the more we need.

4. As others have found out, relationships with adults can be satisfying on many levels such that new avenues in life are opened up, and perhaps the focus on children previously found necessary will evaporate. As Kirill pointed out, there is an ethical consideration for anyone with a paedophilic attraction having a relationship with an adult that may simply fail, and causing damage to that person. But the practical problem of losing one's interest in children on one's own is difficult enough, and probably stands a better chance with close support.

I doubt that those who feel that children are essentially more beautiful than adults will change such a view but so what, as long as their behaviour changes. Perhaps one other thing I might add - our abilities to emotionally connect with others, and to have empathy for others should be checked so that they are fully functional, since that might be one area where someone might be lacking, and which would probably make any change more difficult.

Just a few ideas.