So many of us humans have desires that we think "aren't regular". 

I've met and spoke to so many people who are attracted to so many different things. Children, teens, ssa, older people, specific looking boys, specific looking girls, an age group of boys, an age group of girls, specific nationality's, tall, short. in other words every different type of thing on the planet

Thing is, it seems from my various conversations and interactions here on gye and in general, that many of us feel like we are hiding "a really bad secret" of "really disturbing feelings and desires" that cannot under any circumstances be talked about or shared for fear of us creeps getting "exposed" .

Let me tell everyone a secret..... they are regular and normal feelings and desires, we are just embarrassed to share them. We hide them, squash them and make believe they don't exist for fear of someone "exposing us". 

Yes, you got it right. Pedophilia (sexual attraction to prepubescents) hemophilia (sexual attraction to post-pubescents teens ages 11-14 )and ephebophilia (sexual attraction to teenagers) are NORMAL FEELINGS. Its ok to FEEL that way. Its just NOT OK to ACT that way. 

I personally am attracted to only teenagers, (boys or girls) (ephebophilia). It is normal. We are just scared to share our feelings and desires because were scared of people thinking we are creeps/molesters etc. You are NOT a creep/molester if you have these FEELINGS or DESIRES. A molester is someone who ACTS on his feelings or desires.  

You are normal. You deserve to be loved and cared about and embraced and respected and looked up to, you can be a counselor, go to the mikveh, hug your kids, kiss your kids, pat your camper on the back. Relax about being "exposed" breath easy, share yourself with your wife, with your friends, with yourself.

Please, chime in everyone!

So many of us humans have desires that we think "aren't regular". 

I've met and spoke to so many people who are attracted to so many different things. Children, teens, ssa, older people, specific looking boys, specific looking girls, an age group of boys, an age group of girls, specific nationality's, tall, short. in other words every different type of thing on the planet

Thing is, it seems from my various conversations and interactions here on gye and in general, that many of us feel like we are hiding "a really bad secret" of "really disturbing feelings and desires" that cannot under any circumstances be talked about or shared for fear of us creeps getting "exposed" .

Let me tell everyone a secret..... they are regular and normal feelings and desires, we are just embarrassed to share them. We hide them, squash them and make believe they don't exist for fear of someone "exposing us". 

Yes, you got it right. Pedophilia (sexual attraction to prepubescents) hemophilia (sexual attraction to post-pubescents teens ages 11-14 )and ephebophilia (sexual attraction to teenagers) are NORMAL FEELINGS. Its ok to FEEL that way. Its just NOT OK to ACT that way. 

I personally am attracted to only teenagers, (boys or girls) (ephebophilia). It is normal. We are just scared to share our feelings and desires because were scared of people thinking we are creeps/molesters etc. You are NOT a creep/molester if you have these FEELINGS or DESIRES. A molester is someone who ACTS on his feelings or desires.  

You are normal. You deserve to be loved and cared about and embraced and respected and looked up to, you can be a counselor, go to the mikveh, hug your kids, kiss your kids, pat your camper on the back. Relax about being "exposed" breath easy, share yourself with your wife, with your friends, with yourself.

Please, chime in everyone!

Human being wrote on 02 Dec 2022 06:55:

1. For someone SSA, going to the Mikvah can be a problem. For someone attracted to children, it's a bad idea to become a Rebbi, teacher, or counselor. Because you're then putting yourself into a dangerous situation. The same way a heterosexual person shouldn't go to a strip club and tell himself he won't look. The gemara says someone who deliberately walks past a place where there will be improperly dressed women is called a Rasha if there's another way to go even if he didn't see anything. 
2. Many sexually deviant attractions have underlying phsycological causes. While having such feelings Does Not make one a bad person unless he acts on it, that does not mean the feeling or attraction itself is normal. When people (mostly academic sexual and gender studies professors) call pedophiles MAPs, for example, it is intended to say feelings of pedophilia are normal, and don't require introspection to see if there's any underlying phsycological cause. The same way gender dysphoria is rapidly being changed from a disorder in the previous DSMs the a normal and legitimate feeling.

They could be "regular" and still be unhealthy! 
it's not a matter of good/bad or right/wrong. its healthy vs unhealthy, the way we are designed to think vs some other way way...

Shmuel wrote on 02 Dec 2022 13:32:

 I think no feelings are unhealthy. We don't choose our feelings. Actions are unhealthy. In inability to control feelings, or share feelings, In inability to act normal, be regular around others, not be creepy, and be relationship-able is unhealthy. If one cant function normally, be able to be intimate, respect boundaries, and have boundaries, then that is unhealthy. Not feeling things we never chose in the first place.
what does everyone think?

1. but I believe that most of us can control our urges with all the consequences of acting on them. If you cant, or have logical reason to believe you cant, of course please do not put yourself in a compromising position.
As I stated before, Halachically, even someone who actually pulls through and controls his urges but puts himself in a place where he will be tested, is considered to have sinned. On this Chazal said "Al Ta'amin B'atzmecha ad Yom Moscha" and "Ein Apatrapus L'arayos"
2.Problem is, when we can't share our feelings/desires and get reassurance that we are normal, it causes us so much unnecessary anxiety. 
The phrasing I would use is "when we can't share our feelings/ desires and get reassurance that there is help to be had in the struggle"
3.The Jewish world I believe is unfortunately 20+ yrs behind the non Jewish community on this. 
Therefore, the non-Jewish world is well on its way to normalizing pedophilia and actually denying treatment to many who suffer from different forms of mental illness based on this. I don't like to get political and I don't agree with  a lot  of what Ben Shapiro says, but in his show this Friday www.podbean.com/ew/dir-9deft-15d3576d he covers the topic pretty well
4.To your second point. "Normal" and "regular" I believe, is defined by commonality. One cant say "the world isn't the norm" The norm is what is common. Here's some notes to look up on the commonality. Numerous studies show various attractions are regular. I investigated some of the studies and I want to give you a TRIGGER WARNING. I put in a spoiler to make my post more read-able.

In other words anywhere from 1-9% of people are attracted to children and the numbers of people attracted to teenagers is way higher. Even if we say its just 20% total. We are talking  over 66 million people in the US (66,380,000). Almost 2 million people in New jersey (1,853,400) and over 25 thousand people in Lakewood, (27,614). 1,872,800 in Israel, 7,650,000 in Canada 26,000,000 in Mexico 11,196,000 in England and over 1.6 billion worldwide.   

 I happen to agree that {in most cases} they are not natural but rather nurture derived attractions (emotional neglect/trauma).
But who cares were it comes from? What I care about is the commonality. Commonality is what makes something normal, not its origins. 
A.I would appreciate a source for the 20% number. In regards to the pedophilia numbers, my filter will not allow me to open the links, but much of the theory and work in this area was done by people with a specific agenda in mind, and much of gender theory was actually originated by a pedophile and child abuser with VERY dubious numbers (i.e. generated by sample groups of prisoners in general, and convicted rapists and pedophiles in particular.) 
B.My definition of "Normal" may be different than yours. I define normal as sexual attractions brought about through normal puberty, not through commonality, which is highly variable and often depends on societal pressures. For example, rates of suicidal idiation are EXTREMELY high for trans kids and teens, however the suicide rates for such kids are skyrocketing in mainly liberal areas

5.The people who don't have the challenge of being attracted to a forbidden genders/age groups/fetishes and don't know how common it is and think its bad/unhealthy/wrong, will never gain the trust of anyone who has this challenge to share their challenge with them. Why would anyone share their challenge with someone who will tell them "your unhealthy" Your unwell' "get help quick", so the people who think its uncommon stay blissfully ignorant.   
As someone who has had QUITE uncommon and bizzare fetishes, I would divide between "Bad", and unhealthy/ wrong. No One is bad for having a thought,  However that is different than unhealthy, as thought patterns and processes are often serious indicators of trauma based, neurological, phsycological, or phsychiatric level problems (A Harvard med study funded by NIH in Aug 2019 on the "gay gene" theory based on a sample group of over 500,000 people worldwide actually linked the genetic profile that may cause gay attraction from birth to: higher rates of depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, lonliness, smoking, and cannabis use. This study was supressed by LGBT rights groups)

my post has been moved to later on in the thread. It has been updated with much more context. Thanks for reading!

jackthejew wrote on 02 Dec 2022 10:06:

Thank you for disagreeing. I respect your opinion and I agree on the first point that some people should avoid the mikveh, being a rebbi etc. On the second point i wholeheartedly disagree.  Under each heading is a spoiler. In the spoilers are the paragraphs and details of my arguments. I did it with this format for easier reading. Id love feedback from whoever has the patience to sit down and read through it. I put much time into preparing and bringing the links to the footnotes supporting my arguments, so enjoy!! Please comment below! Cant wait for everyone's comments- negative or positive!


Disclaimers

Arguments(i mostly agree) about the first point of jackthejew who we love so much even though we disagree (about an SSA guy going to the mikveh)

Arguments about the second point of jack the jew who we love so much even though we disagree.

WHILE EACH DESIRE/FEELING INDIVIDUALLY IS LESS COMMON; GROUPING THEM TOGETHER MAKES HAVING STRANGE DESIRES COMMON.
I want to reiterate. I'm not saying everyone has these feelings. It isn't THE norm. You should not expect the people around you to be challenged with your specific subset of feelings and desires, but rather that enough people have these feelings for us to be deemed within-the-norm of regular human beings.

Out of the 20 or so percent of us who have  'different' desires we are further divided into multiple categories. So each category alone isn't too common. (Lets average it out based on the research. We are talking about around 3% of people are attracted to pedophilia, 5% to hebephilia,  8% ephebophilia, 4% gerontophilia, and 4% SSA, and 1% numerous other things,- fetishes included. So we are talking about a small but significant amount of people for each attraction group). Yet when put together, it becomes more then just significant. It becomes within-the-norm of human desires to have interesting attractions. You are not a creep, you are not a molester. You are within the norm-of-human desires. While we have desires that may not be the norm. We are still not "an other".

CHAPTER 2. WHY WE THINK WE ARE CREEPS AND WHY OTHERS THINK WE ARE CREEPS TOO.

-- So why do so many people not understand how common it is?
--Why do so many people think they are "crazy" "molesters" "creeps"? I think the answer is simple.

Firstly, so many of us have desires we have never even met, because they are too dangerous for us to bring to our consciousness, so we squash them as if they don't exist in order to feel more comfortable.  

Secondly, the people who don't have the challenge of being attracted to a forbidden genders/age groups/fetishes and don't know how common it is and think its bad/unhealthy/wrong, will never gain the trust of anyone who has this challenge to share their challenge with them. Why would anyone share their challenge with someone who will tell them "your unhealthy" Your unwell' "get help quick", so the people who think its uncommon stay blissfully ignorant.   Yet the people who have the challenge of having an attraction that they cant act on and have the courage to be open about it, can gain the trust of others who share the challenge too. And yes, the percentage of people who shared with me their struggles and it included an aspect of "creepy"  different/not as common "hidden desires" that can NEVER EVER be leaked, is astronomical.  And yes you'll never know how normal it is if you think its not normal because no one wants to share feelings with someone who will say their not normal..

THE QUESTION OF UNHEALTHY VS HEALTHY. AND SHOULD WE GET HELP. DO WE NEED THERAPY OR NOT?

1) ARE THESE DESIRES HEALTHY OR UNHEALTHY
Well what is the definition of healthy? What is the definition of unhealthy? Lets look to the dictionary. 

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unhealthy#:~:text=an%20unhealthy%20climate-,%3A%20not%20in%20good%20health%20%3A%20sickly%2C%20diseased,%3A%20injurious%2C%20bad

-unhealthy, adjective, un·​healthy, ˌən-ˈhel-thē : not conducive to health

What is unhealthy emotionally? First we got to figure out what emotional health is. This is the best definition I found for emotional health.   www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/schools/deal/deal-resources/emotional-health/emotional-health/

"Emotional health is about how we think and feel. It is about our sense of wellbeing, our ability to cope with life events and how we acknowledge our own emotions as well as those of others. It doesn’t mean being happy all of the time."
We can then give the definition of 'emotionally unhealthy' as something "not conducive to our sense of well being, our ability to cope with life events and as well as being not conducive to an ability for self acknowledgment and acknowledgment of others. So its really based on the general consensus and of individual opinion.

Does the public view pedophilia as "not conducive to our sense of well being" -I think yes. Does the public view pedophilia as something that hinders our ability to "cope with life events"? -Some yes some no.

Does the public view hebephilia as "not conducive to our sense of well being" -I think yes. Does the public view hebephilia as something that hinders our ability to "cope with life events"? -Some yes some no. 

Does the public view ephebophilia, gerontophilia, SSA, or fetishes  as "not conducive to our sense of well being" -I think no. Does the public view ephebophilia, gerontophilia, SSA, or fetishes as something that hinders our ability to "cope with life events"? -I think no.

And this is all public perception. So with the exception of pedophilia and hebephilia, the public in my opinion considers almost all unique attractions "emotionally healthy"
i believe that the footnote below is the publics perception of attraction to teenagers and the like.
Ephebophilia is used only to describe the preference for mid-to-late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction.[1] Generally, the preference is not regarded by psychologists as a pathology, as long as it does not interfere with other major areas of one's life. It is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) or the ICD-10.[2]


-What about personal opinion? This makes a big difference. Unlike physical health in which the definition is black and white, either its good for the body or not, whether something is emotionally unhealthy, varies by the person. For one person Ephebophilia might be very "unconducive to our sense of well being" and might make him very unable "cope with life events", while for another person feelings of pedophilia might very well be "not conducive to our sense of well being" (i think we can all agree on that) it may nevertheless not at all hinder him from "coping with life events". 

Point is, its a person to person basis if something is conducive to them or not. I'm sure in countries where the legal age of consent is lower, it is very conducive, while in country's of older consent is is lesser. It varies by religion. It varies by how strong ones desires are. It varies if that is the only attraction one has or its one of a few or many.
aka--- worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/age-of-consent-by-country     

In summary, If various unique desires are emotionally healthy or not, varies on many variables. Every person is different, pedophilia being the exclusion.2) DO WE NEED HELP
I think you now know the answer. If your attraction is emotionally unhealthy for you then its time to reach out for help, because if it is "not conducive to your sense of well being, or your ability to cope with life events and it also is not conducive to helping you grant yourself self acknowledgment and​ acknowledgment of others" then it is time for you to help your life be better. So of course you should reach our for help.
3) DO WE NEED TO GO TO THERAPY
Here's were it gets simpler. Going to therapy means going to a professional. If you need a professional then definitely go to therapy. We all have different opinions of what are examples of "you need a professional" I think there are definitely a few we can agree on. 1- Your at risk for hurting yourself or others. 2-your at risk for doing things illegal. 3- As a result of your desires/feelings you cant function with day to day responsibility's. 4- Because of your feelings/desires, you are unable to have safe stable relationships. 5-Becouse of your feelings/desires you are overeating, using an addictive substance, gambling, drinking or doing anything else dangerous or damaging to avoid your feelings. There are countless more, but that's up to everyone's personal opinion.

I do want to add, that one who needs a professional and instead goes to a rebbi/mentor/chizzukdude/ is not only not helping himself, he is damaging himself. If you need a professional- GO TO A PROFFESIONAL.

WHY THIS IS INTEGRAL TO HEALING OURSELVES
Why is this so important? It is hugely hugely hugely important. I cant stress it enough. If we are scared to explore and accept and face our desires, we wont be able to fight the proper fight against our desires and we will have so much less clarity in how to control our desires. We will have a harder time reaching out. A harder time being authentic. Relationships that are less intimate. Less vulnerable. A common misconception we have, is that if we hide our feelings or squash them as if they don't exist , they'll have less power. Unfortunately feelings and desires have more power over us if we hide them.

Human being wrote on 02 Dec 2022 21:03:

Viruses are unhealthy. 
It's just the way it is, that doesn't make it good or bad right or wrong...
Anything that isn't functioning the way it is designed is unhealthy...

Wishing you all the best!

Human being wrote on 04 Dec 2022 07:39:

I thank you for and value your opinion. However, I still disagree with your assertion that you can be your own arbiter of what is based on healthy thought patterns and what isn't. To give an extreme example, a schizophrenic will always believe his own hallucinations, but just because HE believes he's healthy doen't mean he doesn't need psychiatric help. That is the entire basis of involuntary comittment. Which has fallen out of favor by the liberal establishment in charge of many major US cities and has led to a catatstrophic homelessness problem. The "rock bottom" of SA is partly a realization that "I'm not doing fine, and I can't function", but until hitting bottom, most people can't bring themselves to admit to something as monumental as that. TO ADMIT IV'E BEEN RUNNING MY LIFE WRONG for any reason? SO it may take a loooong time to recognize that reality. So some of the signs something may be mentally not right include interesting sexual attractions. Someone who has a desire for violent fetish, WHICHEVER side of the equation he visualizes himself on, probably has something underlying that should be worked on.