Hi KC,

This incident could have happened to anyone and you’ve done nothing to feel guilty about. You were concerned about your good friend who’s been depressed and isolated. You called first but there was no answer. So you went over to check on him. Your intentions were good. And your left feeling bad after crude, hurtful, and inappropriate words are spewed at you. How’s that for irony!

Life isn’t fair. Sh*% happens.

Seems to me that this guy’s got problems that you shouldn’t be feeling guilty about. His needs and feelings are not more important than your own.

B

Dear KC:

You are welcome. Good to read your positive update. Excellent communication and resolution with your friend. Good thing you gave him his key back. Hope you have fun cooking, and do post anytime you want to.

anita

Dear KC/ KayCee:

A summary of what you shared in this thread and recently in your posts in my thread: you are 24 (or 25 by now), he is a year younger than you, “like a brother to” you, friends for a long time. He’s been very depressed during the lockdown, May this year, got drunk and passed out in his bathtub. You happened to check on him, having a key to his apartment, and found him in the tub. You woke him up and he got angry at you, accusing you “of violating his privacy because he was naked”. He “said some real crude hurtful things.. his words were hurtful and I’m still upset by what he said to me… I won’t use his words because they were crude and disrespectful”, you wrote in May, and you didn’t share what those words were, except that “he made reference to how he keeps himself (his hair ‘there’).. how he chooses to shave that area.. it was what he said to me about how he keeps his hair not the fact that he chooses to shave some.. not all .. of his hair there”.

You shared that you suffer from OCD, so I can see how what he told you stuck to your brain and circulated in your brain, that’s the nature of OCD, I know because I suffered decades of it. Sexual things, naked bodies, “down there” makes people curious, kind of wanting to know.. what’s down there and not wanting to  know at the same time. This is why many, many people who suffer from OCD focus on sexual topics.

In your recent posts, almost 3 months later, he got a case of poison ivy and he undressed for the purpose of you putting ointment on his back, shoulders, and back of  legs, and you got to see.. again his “down there”, still awkward, but you are relieved that he no longer felt uncomfortable and angry with you for seeing him naked.

Your posts this morning bring to my mind my own feelings about details of what  I believe should be private and not public: how people’s bodies down there look like, how they groom those parts.. I really don’t want to know. It makes me uncomfortable to be shown or told.

I am wondering, if you want to share, what did you or do you  otherwise obsess about, what is the nature of your OCD, and when did it start?

(I think that mine started in my first decade of life and my first obsession was, I think, was the thought, and fear involved, that my mother will die, and that I will somehow be responsible for that).

anita

Dear KayCee:

You are welcome and I appreciate your input because it teaches me more than I knew before I communicated with you. I do believe what you wrote, that “the entire incident wasn’t sexual at all”. But what I learned from our communication,  is that when someone talks about someone else’s “down there”, or posts sexual details, it feels like that person was turned on or is turned on by sharing those details!

It is something for you (and any OCD person who obsesses about anything sexual) to keep in mind when sharing obsessions of sexual content on a public forum: some people will feel that it turns you on to share those things, and some people will be turned on themselves by reading those details.

Thank you for increasing my understanding on the matter. I understand that you don’t want to go further into your OCD history. If you do want to start a new thread on any matter, please do.

anita

Dear KayCee:

You are welcome, and thank you for helping me learn more about myself and other people. Sometimes learning is uncomfortable, but it is still worth it.

anita

Dear KayCee:

You asked me what I meant by my last message to you 18 days ago. I will elaborate on that message:

Here is what you shared about this man’s genital area since May 4, repeatedly and into a second page of your thread:

“he was naked… I saw him naked… I saw how he looks like naked… how he keeps himself (his hair ‘there’).. how he chooses to shave that area…how his privates look like and how he keeps his hair ‘there’… I don’t want to remember how he looks like naked… how he shaves his private area.. I know some men choose to groom that area just as females do… my ex did also..  how he keeps his hair not the fact that he chooses to shave some.. not all.. of his hair down there… I need to also respect his feelings that he lost his privacy and knowing how he  keeps his hair there is as personal as it gets.”-

You posted in a public forum the words: “there”, “that area”, “privates”, “down there”, “private area”. People reading these words and your descriptions of his genitals area are able to bring up images in their brains, and actually see what you are referring to. It is similar to a person reading a pornographic article or novel: reading naked body/ sexual words and descriptions bring up images to the reader’s brain and those images sexually arouse the reader.

With your words regarding this  man’s genitals area, you pointed a figurative camera to his genitals, and you did it in a public forum where a lot  of people may be reading your words. Some of the people reading will get sexually aroused to some extent as a result. Some people will think that your motivation was to arouse them, and/  or to arouse yourself, and be offended.

For the purpose of your thread, which is to get advice regarding mending what you referred to as a platonic frienship, there is no advantage for potential advice givers to know anything about his genitals area. To know that he shaved some of his pubic hair but not all of his pubic hair, and to know that an ex boyfriend of yours shaved his pubic hair, is of no use in figuring out how you can mend a friendship. Because of the irrelevance of these details, the suspicion that you have a sexual motive in sharing these details is understandable.

I don’t know if you have a sexual motivation in pointing the camera to his “down there”. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.

It is possible that you don’t have a sexual  motivation, you wrote: “I guess it’s my ocd. The topic as you say may sound sexual in nature but the entire incident wasn’t sexual at all, nor my thoughts or even his comment. I might’ve made you think that but it’s not”. (I asked you to elaborate on your OCD, but you wrote “Don’t want to get further into that”)-

– it is possible that you have been obsessiong about his genitals area not because it arouses you, or that you want to arouse the readers, but because you suffer from OCD.

Let’s say the culprit is OCD-  it doesn’t change the fact that practically, some readers on a public forum will still be aroused, and some readers will be angry and offended because this is not a pornographic forum, and people don’t want images of genitals areas brought into their brains while they are trying to help the original poster with her (non-sexual) friendship.

I hope I made things more clear for you.

anita

Hi KayCee – How are you doing? -B