Quote:
Originally Posted by bixkf
There is a reason that the majority of laws and rules regarding age and knowing right and wrong specify ages around 16-18 as the limit. Ultimately, science and society view that only adults should be held completely accountable for their actions.
Your husband was 10 years old, not even into puberty. Both he and his sister were mentally, physically and emotionally immature so why would you think that their acts would accurately reflect his character at 20/30/40...? I mean if we considered every person who took off their clothes as a child and ran around the house to be an exhibitionist, nudist or pervert....we'd all likely have that label.
I am sure that this memory he has brings him so guilt feelings as an adult, because viewing the situation from adult eyes...he feels he did something wrong. The thing is...as a child, there was nothing wrong. As children, we are all innocent....we are curious, we explore...we experiment, we get hurt. In this case, no one got hurt and the two were likely curious about what made each other different.
I think that your husband needs to work on removing the guilt he seems to be feeling, as it is likely a bit unhealthy. He shouldn't apply adult morals and judgements to events at 10 years old. He needs to work on accepting his childhood, with all the experiences that it included.
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Thank you for your thorough reply, bixkf. I honestly had put this incident behind us after he first told me about it several months ago and neither of us have spoken of it since. The main reason it is in my thoughts lately is because of a certain story that has been a big deal in the news lately about molestation cases. I couldn't help but be reminded of this and wonder if it was something I'm supposed to reconsider before starting a family.
The other reason I was hesitant to pass it off as innocent childhood curiosity was that my husband seemed to (in my opinion) develop a sexual appetite and curiosity at a young age. He also was exposed to a lot of things from neighborhood kids, etc, that I never had a clue about in my own childhood. I just had to ask the question, why was he exposing himself to his little sister at nearly 11 years old, and then finding himself addicted to pornography not that much later? Seems like a really short window between "complete innocence" and a sexual understanding. I don't know, I'll admit I don't have a lot to reference in regards to these situations as I lived a very innocent life my entire childhood and held on to my "naive" view of the world for a long long time.