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HOW-TO · SHELF VI

Seeking Help: Guilt, Privacy and Promises

  • Research
  • Experiential

Should you feel guilty for seeking professional help with your sexuality? And if it is outside your relationship, and you keep it to yourself, how do you think it through?

In brief

  • Shame is inherited; guilt is a signal about your promises.
  • Privacy is not secrecy: ask whether your partner would feel an agreement had been broken.
  • Decide rather than drift: check the law, your health and consent.

This manual is general information based on published research and the sources available to us. It is not medical advice and has not yet been reviewed by a clinician. For questions about your own body, health, medicines, pregnancy or contraception, talk to a doctor or pharmacist.

Guilt and shame are not the same

Shame says, "something is wrong with me for needing this". It is usually inherited, from family, school or culture, and it rarely tells you anything true. Guilt says, "I may be acting against my values or a promise I made". That is a signal worth listening to.

Wanting to be touched, to learn how your body responds, to feel desire or release, is an ordinary need, not a shameful one. The real question is whether the way you meet it is compatible with the promises you have made.

The kind of help changes everything

  1. Help that involves talking or treatment: a sex therapist, a counsellor, a gynaecologist, a pelvic health physiotherapist. Almost nobody would call this a betrayal. What you discuss there is legitimately yours, and it is often the right first step.
  2. Hands-on intimate services: here what is at stake is not morality in the abstract but the agreement between you and your partner.

Privacy and secrecy

Privacy is keeping what is yours: fantasies, therapy, your inner life. Secrecy is hiding something your partner would reasonably see as part of your agreement.

One test: if they found out, would they feel that something you had decided together had been broken? If the answer is yes, it is a secret. Secrets usually carry a cost: distance, the fear of being found out, and often the return of the very need you were trying to meet. If your arrangement is already open or negotiated, it may be permitted, depending on what you agreed about telling each other.

An order for thinking it through

  1. Name the need precisely: touch without obligation, understanding your own body, orgasm, feeling wanted, being seen. Each points to a different answer.
  2. Have you said it in words? Many people look outside before they have asked plainly inside. Your partner may not know what is missing.
  3. Go in order where you can: talk to your partner; a therapist or couples counselling; a negotiated arrangement; then a decision.
  4. If you go ahead without telling, decide rather than drift: in Japan, intercourse in exchange for payment is prohibited under the Anti-Prostitution Act, and services differ widely in what they offer. Protect your health. Choose providers who put consent and boundaries in writing. Be honest with yourself about what you are trading for what, including the risk of being found out.

If the guilt stays

Guilt that lingers is information. Either the agreement no longer fits your life and it is time to renegotiate it, or the secret has become heavier than the need. Working out which, alone with a therapist, is a private and reliable way to decide.

A more useful question than "am I bad for needing this?" is: "am I keeping faith with the promises I have made, and do those promises still fit the life I am living?"

Sources, and what kind of guide this is

  • Research Backed by clinical or laboratory studies, cited at the end.
  • Experiential Works for some people and not others; offered to try, never as a promise.
  1. Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J. & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345–372.
  2. 売春防止法(昭和31年法律第118号)。

This manual is general information based on the sources available to us. It is not medical advice and has not been reviewed by a clinician. For your own body, health or medicines, talk to a doctor.

Concepts in this manual

Privacy and secrecyGuilt and shame

How these guides are madeGlossary of concepts

Read on

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