Well, as much as I would like to think that I am a perfect person, I am definitely not. There are a few secrets that I live with – and I worry what certain people would think if they knew the truth about me. I’m sharing this with you now in hopes that it will lighten some of the burden of keeping it to myself.

1. I am turned on by and masturbate to humiliation porn. I don’t know what it is, or where it started, but for some reason a fetish of mine is when a girl verbally teases me – for example, saying I’m a “loser” or that I’m “addicted” to her perfect body. A brand of this that I am particularly ashamed of is “home wrecker” porn. I am in a committed relationship of several years, and I love my girlfriend very much, but I am aroused by porn in which an extremely attractive women “makes a bet” or something and intends to seduce me in spite of me being in a relationship. There’s something that turns me on about the idea of not being able to resist it.

When I am with my girlfriend, we usually satisfy all of each other’s sexual needs… we have a LOT of sex. So I don’t watch the porn when I am with her. But my job requires that I travel, and will occasionally spend 1-2 months away. That’s when I will watch it.

I have never cheated on my girlfriend, and I have a very strong boundary against it, but I would be lying if I said that I’ve never been afraid that it could happen / aroused by the possibility.

Anyway, I don’t know how I would ever tell my girlfriend that I have these feelings. She is working through insecurity / self-worth issues of her own, and I fear that telling her this would give her a mental breakdown. No one knows about it but me. I feel that it’s a shameful thing to do, but it feels good, so I keep doing it in secret. That’s my first shame story.

2. My girlfriend and I have had an abortion. She has been on the birth control pill since we’ve been dating, and after being assured by a doctor that prescribed her antibiotics that they wouldn’t effect it, we found out that she was pregnant. Neither of us has a stable job, and we felt that we couldn’t muster the time or financial support in order to properly nourish a child. We decided that we would get an abortion, and try again in a year or two when we had a more stable living situation.

My parents had a teen pregnancy, and my mom had my older brother when she was only 16. She and my father struggled through those years, having my older sister 2 years later, and me in another 2 years. They worked hard, and my mom went to medical school through it, eventually becoming a doctor. They have a really inspiring story.

I know my parents are pro-life. I never told them about our abortion. I feel so much shame when I think about telling them. How can I justify doing that, when they struggled through their early lives just to give me life? How could they ever understand? It hurts me to imagine how they would feel. That’s why I’m planning to wait until we have our first child to tell them the truth.

So those are my two shame secrets. Maybe one day I’ll get the courage to share them with the people who matter most, although the thought of it really scares me. Thanks for giving me an outlet to share the truth.