A little book on Christian dating, published by an independent religious organization, gave me the impression that masturbation was the "sin of self-abuse." I could hardly help myself from masturbating, and I felt extremely guilty because the booklet thoroughly condemned it. It gave me the impression that any Christian should be able to break the habit, and thus it caused me no end of concern, as I was not able to do so; I wondered if perhaps my faith was in vain. Besides that, I thought it was ruining my health and causing acne. I tried hard to break the "iron habit," as the booklet called it, but to no avail. I promised myself that I would promise to contribute a certain amount of money to some charitable cause such as the Red Cross, every time I did it; but that did not help either.
Someone told me it affected your eyesight, and I started to believe
them, because I had to get glasses.
It seemed to be a necessary evil and I would repent to God for this
sin, and I even asked his help to make me stop, but when I did stop
for a week I would have wet dreams, so it did not seem to make any
difference.
This may have had some effect on my lack of desire to date, I don't
know.
I believed that I was sinning in the eyes of God, because I had
looked lustfully at the women in the magazines, or the sexual
fantasies created in my own mind.
After I learned that well over 90 percent of American males
masturbate, I lost some of my guilt feelings.
There were times when my guilt would overwhelm me and then I
would go for maybe two weeks without masturbating.
The following cases deal with negative responses of females.
I can remember having the worst guilt feelings. I remember crying
and thinking there was something wrong with me. I thought that
perhaps I was mentally ill.
I always felt guilty because I was touching "bad" parts of my body.
Some of us had heard that if a girl masturbated a lot, she wouldn't
be able to have children when she got married. This was disturbing
to hear, especially after we discovered that masturbation meant the
very thing that we had been doing once in awhile.
These ideas (ideas that I read on masturbation being shameful and
harmful in books about sex) did bother me, but I know I never
actually became neurotic about them. Whenever the thought would
occur to me, I would go ahead and masturbate regardless of how
much my conscience said I should not. I would be tempted, and,
letting my body rule my mind, give in with almost no resistance.
Immediately after the short act had been culminated, I would feel
pangs of guilt about how a nice, wholesome, conscientious girl like
me could do such a thing. If they knew, what would my friends
think of me? Then I would pray to God for forgiveness. These pangs
of guilt seemed to ease after my mind was turned to something else,
or after I had bathed, which seemed to cleanse me both physically
and spiritually.
...it was always with a sense of guilt, I even went so far, on more
than one occasion, to promise God that I would not do it again, but,
of course, I did...
The following cases deal with more positive reactions to masturbation. The first
four cases deal with boys, and the last three are cases of girls.
We seemed to accept this new form of pleasure as an exciting form
of growing up and achieving identification with the male sex.
I have never had any guilt feelings whatsoever about masturbation.
I considered this auto-eroticism a normal pleasure of my body.
At the book rack (in the corner drug store), I read that masturbation
among boys was almost a universal practice. I didn't want to be
left out of anything, so I continued masturbating. It was kind of
habit forming, anyway.
This brought a relief of tensions, and gave me a feeling of satisfaction.
I have never had any guilt feelings about this, and consider it
perfectly natural and beneficial.