Re: Come out to your children, do or don't ?

Sancho,

I agree with Lucky in most respects. I think it would be dangerous to come right out and tell her you are a pedophile.

That said, I think that it is possible for you to successfully maintain your step-fatherly obligations and still let her know how you feel. Instead of coming right out telling her, you should just try to be yourself around her. Let her come to her own conclusions about who you are and what that means. At her age, her perception of what pedophilia means is probably not very clear. As she learns about pedophilia (and sexuality in general) from society and compares that to what she knows of you, she will be forced to deal with the embedded contradictions. Things will probably go something like this:

1) She learns more about sexuality and learns that pedophiles are people who have romantic and sexual attractions to children.

2) She comes to the conclusion that you are a pedophile.

3) She realizes that many of the societal assumptions about pedophilia are wrong.

4) She decides that it would be dangerous to tell anyone what she has discovered about you, because while she knows you are a good person, she understands that society is mistaken in its perception and therefore might ostracize you. This would be the ideal time to talk to her and let her in on your wisdom about the subject.

You should also do what you can to try and let her know what pedophilia truly is as she is learning about it from society, that way it wont be such a jump for her to decide that society has made a mistake about us.

If she gets to know you for who you are, it wont be a big deal to tell her later on.

Sancho: Hey, I have been meaning to tell you for a long time now, but I just couldnt get it out. I was scared of what you might think. A, I am a pedohile.

A: Well, duh!

Haha, maybe it wont happen exactly like that, but hopefully something similar. Good luck.

~The Captain~