Disclaimer: This is going to be long and messy, cause I’m not entirely sure where to start and how much information to give to get the best advice possible. So here goes:

Hi there. I’ll start off by saying I’m a teenage girl and I’ve only scrolled around this forum a couple times, so I’m not entirely sure what the vibe is like, nor am I sure if I’m doing this right. All I know is that I can’t talk to anyone about this irl, so here I am.

I’ll just be blunt: I’m sexually attracted to dogs.

I’ve been a huge animal lover since I was a baby. So much so, that my mom was convinced I was gonna grow up to be a vet (And I was too until I realized I’d be the one putting the animals to sleep if I was). It wasn’t until puberty that the fantasies started and I began to love dogs in a different way. I still feel attracted to humans, so comparing and contrasting the attractions, they’re oddly similar to each other. I’m not gonna go into too much detail on my sexual urges, as I’m still a minor and that’s weird, but the feelings are definitely there.

I’m not entirely sure what caused this. It could be the way I was wired, but I think a part of it is childhood abuse and neglect. My mother had me at a very young age, and she had some issues of her own. She took a lot of things out on me when I was younger, which turned into abuse and emotional neglect. Combine that with an absent father, and you get a girl that doesn’t know how to be intimate, and denies herself the opportunity to feel any negative emotion. My parents definitely treated me better as they got help and grew as people, but the damage to my childhood was already done. I’ve now grown into a very anxious person that has trouble with intimacy. I only show people my surface. Anything deeper and I clam up, which has caused many to believe I’m cold and unloving. In reality, I just don’t know how to be intimate without feeling like I’m attempting to speak Russian (Spoiler alert: I don’t know a lick of Russian). I grew up not allowing myself to cry (I would harm myself anytime I shed a tear, as I was taught that if I wasn’t bleeding and nothing was broken, I should be punished for crying over nothing), and now I have trouble releasing any negative emotions, which causes me to bottle things up until I slowly waste away into a distant, hollow shell. I’m working on improving myself now that I’m self aware, but even with self-awareness, it’s difficult to break free from an internal cycle that I’ve fostered since I was a toddler.

Where do dogs come into all this? Well, I think I may have “imprinted” on them when I was younger, or something like that. I don’t even know if human children can even imprint, but one of my earliest memories is finding comfort and warmth in a big dog that my mom owned for a year or so before giving her away. And since that memory of cuddling that dog, I’ve always found myself feeling immense comfort when in the embrace of an animal. How that turned sexual, I’m not sure. Maybe some mixed associations in my brain or something. I’ve been trying to reflect on why I am the way I am, but I’m no Sherlock. I can only guess. All I know is that dogs have always been a euphoric and comforting presence in my childhood when my own mother was not.

Here’s the thing: I’m not ashamed of my attraction. When I’m with dogs, I feel at peace. I haven’t had any sexual relations with them (Although there have been moments where I’ve been tempted), but just curling up with a dog or wrestling on the floor is so blissful. As a girl suffering from GAD and an overactive mind, it’s so nice to just laugh and feel that primal longing of love. As if life is simpler than I make it out to be. And when I have my fantasizes, I feel good too. If anything, I feel like my extreme affection for my dog has given me some joy in life. Everyday when I come home from school, I have his smiling face to look forward to.

However, I know this is a problem by society’s standards. I’m considered mentally ill and wrong. And the problem isn’t that I feel guilt for it, but that it poses a potential problem for my future. I want to live a simple, drama-free life. I like to think that I have nothing to hide from my loved ones, and that I can be as honest as possible, because I have little to no skeletons in my closet. But this? Yeah, I’m pretty sure zoophilia would cause a lot of complications that I just don’t want to deal with later in life. I’m aiming to get a PhD once I graduate High School. If I got outed as a dog-****er, I’d lose that opportunity. I’d lose my mother who’s worked so hard to raise me to be a normal human being. She’d feel like she did something wrong, and she’d feel like a failure of a parent. She doesn’t deserve to feel like that, and neither does the rest of my family and friends. We’ve had enough crap in our lives, they don’t need me dropping this bomb on them. I can’t say I’d blame them for dropping me out of their lives. A lot of people perceive zoophiles as animal abusers (which is their perception as well), so I’d get where they were coming from, but it’d still be a painful experience. Just kissing my dog on the mouth gets me dirty looks from them. I can’t even begin to imagine their faces if I told them about these feelings. Not to mention that I’ve heard stories of people who have sex with their animals getting them killed or taken away, and that would destroy me.

So the best way to prevent future tragedy? Getting some help.

Problem is, I can’t exactly talk to anyone about this irl. Friends and family are out of the question. I have a therapist who I see for my anxiety, but she’s no sexologist and I have a feeling she’d get my parents involved. And considering I’m a minor, I can’t exactly book a sex therapist myself.

So I guess I’ve got no better option but to turn to an incredibly ancient mental health forum about getting rid of a sexual desire that I have no shame for. Is there a way to just erase these feelings? I know people say porn leads to this kind of slippery slope, but I don’t really watch porn (And the few bestiality clips I have watched are straight up abusive), so I don’t believe it’s a porn addiction issue. I’ve been thinking about bringing it up with my therapist, but framing it as though a friend of mine confessed to being a zoophile, however, I can see several ways in which that would go wrong. I’ve tried consulting some zoophile spaces (Yes they exist, and my lord is the internet a crazy place) but a lot of them encourage “Coming out” which is a huge no-go. Even if I wasn’t a minor and could afford my own therapy, I’m pretty sure they’d put something like “Zoophile: Keep away from animals” on my record, which would be a great look for any future careers. Is there some kind of self-hypnotization or training I could do to start hating animals instead? I’ve read some studies on that. Like a sort of “Mind over matter” kind of thing.

I know it sounds stupid, but I’m kind of at a loss. It’s not like there are easily accessible solutions on how to stop being a zoophile on the internet. I’m at the age where I’m not quite a child, but not quite an adult either. Any solutions to fixing the loose screws in my brain from the adults would be helpful. Thank you in advance, and I apologize for my lengthy post/grammatical errors. And for bringing up such a taboo topic. I know this kind of stuff makes people uncomfortable, but this is the only place I could think of.

I just want to be normal. For the sake of my wellbeing and for those I care about.