Anyone here grow up religious/still religious? How has that affected you?
(Questions at the bottom)
I grew up non-denominational christian and can trace this link back as far as I have memory. My whole life my religion and my kink were at war with each other as I grew up in strict purity culture.
When I went through puberty and discovered porn, I tried to pursue this kink, not realizing most mainstream porn sites don’t have scat. This added fuel to the idea that I was alone in my kink and there was something deeply wrong with me. Instead of scat, I looked at pee porn, specifically lesbian pee porn as per coming from a cock didn’t interest me.
When my parents found out I had looked at porn there was a huge ordeal over it and, in about a weeks time, everyone in my life knew I had been looking at it. This came as a huge shame in the church and I started to be treated differently by other congregants. My parents told me horrible things about myself and I collapsed in on myself, nearly ending it all.
After I recovered, on my own, I kept looking at porn (had to sneak around the parental guards) and they eventually caught me again, this time looking at lesbian piss porn. They forced me to go to therapy and work (at 13) to pay for it. First session, my mom comes with me and dumps to the therapist all the stuff I’ve been looking at, my circumventing their firewalls, and asks him if I’m “mentally deranged” for looking at that.
Knowing that wasn’t even the most extreme thing I was into, I decided it wasn’t safe to be honest with the therapist and just pretended to get better as fast as I could and stop going.
I spent the next decade hating myself, hating my sexuality in any format, and regularly harming myself to try to train my mind to not think about it.
I got married to a Christian woman and threw myself into Christian ministry. I was very invested and wanted to do missions work and thought maybe enough commitment would make these feelings go away.
After some time, I had a bad go of it with my parents and estranged myself from them. I left our toxic and exploitative church and for 3 years have been deconstructing and trying to figure life out.
I told my wife early in our relationship that porn was a struggle for me, expecting her to leave me but instead she was very gracious and patient. Later, when we left the church, I told her about this kink and again, to my utter shock, she accepted it. She’s not into it but she’s established her boundaries and in certain ways does some scat things for me.
The whole process of deconstructing Christianity has given me so much peace around this kink and helped me accept it as part of me. Having an accepting wife has also been so incredibly healing. I’m trying to learn how to be the healthy and whole person I want to be (doing therapy too) but it’s good to know I’m not alone anymore.
So, my question is, if you were raised religious or are religious, how has this kink affected you? Have you struggled to reconcile them? Is there anything that helped you find peace?