My mom always felt free to barge in on us in the shower--at any age! Once she caught my brother in the act (she barged very quickly) and chewed him out. Of course that didn't stop him, but what a huge invasion of privacy! Talk about no boundaries whatsoever.

In addition to that we were frequently given that little For the Strength of Youth booklet that outlaws it in no uncertain terms.

Did your parents go to extremes or, on the other hand, contradict the church's stance and let you be?

Wow that must have been traumatizing. If I ever have kids I could never ever them attend the mormon church for that reason alone. I will absolutely forbid my mother to even discuss the church with them until they are 18. My parents didn't go to those extremes. They actually didn't talk much about sex to me as a teenagerand gave me my privacy for the most part but I still feel traumatized and abused by the teachings I received in the priesthood meetings at church. My parents were not liberal mormons so they wouldn't have told me to just ignore the church on that point. They are in agreement.

Yeah, my plan on handling masturbation (my son is turning twelve soon, so in the next few years this will come up.) is to simply continue with open and comfortable discussion of sex, and generally leave them alone about it.

A friend and I both agreed that if we walked in on a son getting bust with himself we would just close the door again and later say, "You lock the door next time!"

My Mo dad told me that nine out of ten men masturbate and the tenth was a liar. Yes, he was Mo. My mother found my Playboys and it didn't bother her. (I still remember when you had to get your porn from magazines.) I suppose my California Mo parents were liberal in that respect.

I just never talked about it, and did it, frequently and watched porn. Both with way too much guilt. Never got caught. However, my aunt and uncle have done a lot of work developing the 12 step porn program for the church. I find that ironic. God I am glad they never found out.

My mom quietly washed the ultra stiff socks next to my bed. They were stiff like unto a board.

My kids will have to wash their own abused socks.

LOL My parents never talked with us about sex. I can't imagine it.

Being a walking boner, I am sooo glad my parents NEVER mentioned The Big Factory...

I must have the world record for strokes...

BY

Spying, barging in, searching my room, threatening to take the door down, peeking under doors at me using mirrors... But never any direct communication about anything. Just constantly trying to bust me "sinning" in any way possible.

And I'm female!

that's traumatizing!!!!!!!

if I ever have kids, I'm going to treat them with respect. if they masturbate, I would be proud, it means their normal. I would never talk about it and embarrass them, that would be ridiculous

Hmm, I probably wont have to deal with this for almost a decade yet with my boys. But I plan to have them washing their own sheets and clothing by that point so that they could have privacy. My mom would comment very loudly and complain in front of my siblings if I ever got period blood on my sheets and it was horribly embarrassing. If I tried to wash my own laundry she would actually start digging through it! I hope I can give my kids the dignity and privacy that I was never given...

My idiot parents let the bishop "handle" it (pun intended). Plus, dopey Dad gave my two brothers the infamous Boyd Packer "little factory" pamphlette. He knew I'd laugh in his face, so I didn't get a copy.

My parents never ever talked to me about sex. I started masturbating when I was 11, and I didn't even know what I was doing. I was just simply doing it because it felt nice.

I managed to go a good few years without my parents knowing. But once I was on holiday with my family, I think a couple of years later when I was 13, and I was with my family literally all day and night, and we had one family room in a hotel, so I had no privacy basically. As a 13 year old, going a few days without is torture, so one morning I caved, and decided to masturbate before my shower, and I took quite a long time. I guess my parents were wanting me to hurry up, but instead of asking me to get out, my dad unlocked the door form the outside (crappy cheap hotel locks I guess), and walked in and started shouting at me. :( I was so scared, and he never talked to me about it again after that, but it was so awkward, I kept really quiet the entire day after that.

I think my parents were a bit shocked. You find a lot of mormon parents are quite old-fashioned and deluded, and think their sons won't start masturbating until they're like 16 or something...

I can't imagine either one of my parents saying the M word, let alone having a conversation.

My dad was a bishop. I hope he never had the courage to talk about it to the kids in his ward. Really none of his business anyway.

My TMB mother went to the same extreme.

Even at 13 she was busting into the bathroom and one time went as far as to "inspect" my penis for signs of masturbation after seeing some chafing on it during one of her "burst ins".

It was one of the few things about masturbation that was somehow MORE uncomfortable than being alone with my bishop as he questioned me about the same things. Sadly I didn't know well enough to lie at the time to stop him and was too afraid of my mother to try and stop her.

There was never an actual sex talk - only talk of a talk - and then it seemed to slide right into the assumption that I must just have known. I did not. For all the masturbation talk I know I would have been much better off personally if someone would have sat me down and actually had "the talk".

It took years and years before I actually understood things and even years since then those previous experiences have left an everlasting evereffecting impression on me.

OMG it was effing awful.

As a back story, you need to understand that I had been being sexually abused by my uncle (same ward we lived in & he was best friends of the two men) since I was about 9 (difficult to remember exactly).

My mom was a single mom, so wasn't quite sure how to handle the conversation.

She had the HOME TEACHERS talk to me about it. These two old men (I'm guessing about mid 60's same age as my uncle) actually came into our home, sat me down & proceded to tell me how any sexual sin is second only to murder. I had to sit there, looking at these two men, allowing them to say such things, while their friend had been doing what he had been doing. And they were telling ME it was bad.

OMFG.

I wanted to crawl out of my skin, slide across the floor and just die.

But am I angry? Absolutely.

This single act caused no amount of self-loathing, self-hating, ZERO self esteem!

As a matter of fact, I think that it was one of the events that led up to a suicide attempt at 13.

And people ask me why I hate this cult.

...he asked about it in annual worthiness interviews. He seemed relieved when I'd lie, because it saved him the embarrassment of needing to talk about it further.

Mom never said anything about it.

Well I did it with my sons the way my parents did it.
"Don't ask - don't tell".

Never discussed it, never did anything

Dad advised me to refrain from self pleasuring, and almost caught me at it several times. His council went unheeded. When it came to my own son, and "THE TALK", the subject of masturbation was never mentioned. I am NOT a hypocrite, after all....

Ron Burr

They never discussed it at all, and I considered it a private matter. I never felt guilty about it.

My parents never discussed sex at all with any of their children. Officially, masturbation did not exist. They did take the doors off all of our rooms, though, until one of my dad's brothers came to visit and remarked on how inappropriate it was for us kids to have no privacy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2013 10:25PM by stbleaving.

What parent would WANT to catch their kid mb? Is this a common thing among TBM parents? Fortunately my parents respected my privacy and didn't try to catch me in the act.

I accidentally opened the bad room door once and my older one stud there. I closed the door quietly and did not tell even my wife. I doubt that he even realized that I had opened the door for a split second.
But I’ll thing not that I did something special, just what normal people do.

My parents never discussed sex wit me, either. They left that job up to the inspired leadership of the LDS church. When I was 16 I thought it best to chop off my you-know-what. I didn't, but part of me thought that was the only moral thing to do.

I was the home teacher a certain fairly new Apostle for a while when he was a grad student at BYU (I think he was a student at the time- he may have been a professor but I don't think so). One day he was opining regarding the increased role that fathers would someday play in TSCC as it developed into a more rigorously patriarchal organization. One of the milestones he proposed was that interviews between the bishop and young people would cease,and the father would have the privilege of interviewing his children and then reporting to the bishop. One of the questions he felt it was his duty to ask his sons was the current topic. Note that the motive in raising the subject with his sons was purely to ascertain their wothiness to approach God. It had nothing whatsoever to do with explaining sex and/or helping them understand a difficult and intensely personal concept. I kid you not.

If my son is in the bathroom longer than my wife thinks he should be she begins to worry. But I just tell her to leave him alone.

My Dad peeked through the bathroom window and said, in a loud,
authoritative voice, "I can see exactly what you are doing."

Then he gave me a lecture on how after every time I M'd from
then on I had to be racked with crippling guilt. Well, those
weren't the exact words but that was the effect.

Your Dad looked in the bathroom window? You gotta be kidding. You should have used the window as your "target" until he couldn't see through it anymore. What an ass.

So....lots of crazies out there wasting energy over an activity as old as mankind and as normal as eating and sleeping.

Religion is a beautiful thing, isn't it, friends?

I got a couple talks from both parents about how sex was great and everything, but had to be contained with the "bounds the Lord has set for us." Otherwise it would lead to nothing but pain and guilt. Also, they often stressed how "evil" pornography was.

I'm pretty sure the first time I really told a serious outright lie was about masturbation. I was probably around 16 and had been masturbating regularly for years. I can't remember what had led up to this interrogation, but it ended up with my mom asking if I'd ever viewed porn. I told her that I hadn't. (Which was true at that point) And then my mom looked me straight in the eyes and asked me if I'd ever masturbated. I knew that any hesitation or uncertainty on my part would confirm in her mind that I had masturbated, and I figured that would land me in front of the branch president for sure. I've always been very shy, so the idea of sitting across the desk from some old guy I barely knew discussing the most private and intimate thing I'd ever done filled me with terror. So I looked right back into my mom's eyes and said, "No." She stared at me for a while and then said she didn't know whether or not she believed me and the conversation pretty much just ended. The whole thing really bothered me. I felt bad about outright lying to my mom, but I never told her the truth.

I'm female. But there was never talk about sexual matter in my family. I had to go to the encyclopedia to find the mechanics of sex. No one taught me. Didn't know the correct name for touching yourself either.

I'm so glad this was ignored in my family. Everyone's story here sounds like pure abuse.

Yes I gave never had a sexual relationship, but I'm glad I was spared this humiliation and lack of respect and privacy everyone hear has experienced. everyone here has my sympathy!

We told our daughter that it's fine, but do it in private.