Is spooning sexual?

Is spooning inherently sexual?
What about with family?
Who shouldn't spoon whom in family (immediate and non-immediate) relationships?

How can you tell if one is doing it inappropriately?
When is it acceptable?

Not necessarily. It can be suggestive, but can also be friendly.

I think it's really what is socially acceptable. It may seem more acceptable for the mother to spoon the children than it would be for the father to spoon children. I don't think it's acceptable for aunt's/uncles to spoon with children, or really any adult-children to spoon.

I think same-age spooning is most appropriate. I do think spooning as more sexual in nature, it's just another form of cuddling.

What's acceptable and appropriate to you and the other person with whom you are spooning? That's really the only relevant question. Who cares what's acceptable or appropriate for anyone else?

If the spooning is done to a child - for example an uncle to his niece ....then appropriate or acceptable would be important. We need to know more info - like ages and what gender is doing it. As Dr Skipper said - if a mother is cuddling with a sick child in her bed...that's okay. I noticed you posted this question in the abuse section, therefore assuming you're speaking about a child experience.

Thanks for the answers- here is the info you all might need:

Uncle spooning niece
Not blood related, now estranged
Age of niece: approximately 5 (maybe 4, 5, or 6- when memory becomes less sensory and slightly abstract)
Age of uncle: perhaps 45-50?

What about touching or patting the butt? (Not blatantly sexual, but perhaps slightly paternal)

Well, I say, personally, yes, it's sexual.
I'd say, no, I wouldn't do that with family.
I would find it inappropriate for anyone to do that with my sons, lest when they grow older and do that with their significant others.
For me, that would be acceptable, in an intimate relationship.

That sounds inappropriate to me. I would want to protect the child from any potential abuse from this uncle.

I think it always is sexual if done by a grown man to another person.

It is inappropriate because the relationship is not close enough. Parent-to-child maybe OK, but not uncle-niece. It sounds like a fertile ground for further abuse (SA).

I dont think it needs to be sexual. I do it with friends and family. It has a different feeling when i do it with them compared to doing it with my girlfriend. If the uncle and niece are really close I think its fine. But otherwise id be careful.

Thanks, everyone. I wish there was a black and white answer.

And in response to this, my uncle and I weren't close at all. He was a jerk and an alcoholic who abused my aunt. I had no reason to love him, nor did the rest of my family.

However, I should love everyone... That's something I'm still working on in Christ.

I am not religious, but...if someone took advantage of you, was a jerk, or made you feel uncomfortable, you DON'T have to love them, period.

I think you might want to CHOOSE to love everyone, but any teaching that says that you SHOULD love everyone (the emphasis on SHOULD)... seems off to me. To me the choose to/should difference is major.

Sounds sexual to me.

I guess the thing is with me, loving people helps me overlook hurts. Part of loving, for me, is not necessarily liking them, but knowing that everyone has had their own struggles unique to them and everyone copes differently and that they are just as human, so just as deserving of love as me.
Loving helps me forgive and helps me from being poisoned by my past. Does that make sense? Sorry if I made it sound confusing

It makes perfect sense.

It seems though that you are not trying to love him because you were taught that you SHOULD (as per your earlier post).

It seems, rather, that you seek to love and forgive others because you see commonality between them and you - that you are all human - and thus, believing that you yourself, as a human, are deserving of love, so are they.

That is all pretty deep to me, and, it seems to be something that is authentic and natural to YOU. It does not seem that you are just blindly trying to implement what you are taught. In order words, if you forgive my insisting on the difference between choose/should, it seems that you are, after all, CHOOSING to love the uncle.

More power to you!

Thanks

Now I'm wondering. Is it even worth digging? Should I Ben try knowing? What is there to gain in it? More baggage?

Thanks

Now I'm wondering. Is it even worth digging? Should I even try knowing? What is there to gain in it? More baggage?

ok, my understanding was that what you are talking about is cuddling in a spooning position..."spooning" is sex in that position.

um... no it isn't. Everyone I have ever met and everything I have ever read use the word "spooning" to refer to cuddling in that position.

To answer the question at hand, I would not consider spooning with a small child to be sexual. Although it certainly requires a certain amount of closeness to want to spoon with someone and it seems weird for him to spoon you if you were not close. Something does seem potentially off.

Right, I certainly didn't like him and was afraid of him to some degree. In that sense, I see how spooning would be off.

So, my further question: should I even look into it or should I just leave everything where it's at? Should I try to see if anything else happened as my memories of those things is very choppy?

Is there any particular reason you would think you need to know? Memories of being a small child are choppy for most people. Unless you have some reason to suspect otherwise, I think it would be safe to assume nothing else happened. Presumably you don't remember anything else happening. If something did happen, would it trouble you to know about it? Do you want to be troubled?

I think that depends on what you wish to find out, really...as in, what are you going to do with the information once you get it, if you do? How will you process it? Are you READY to process it if there is more there? Are there other consequences you have considered if you find out more, and are you ready to handle those? Don't get me wrong, if I had thought there was something off in my childhood, I would want to know EVERYTHING, no matter how bad, because it's still in my unconscious somewhere and is most likely effecting my behaviors/issues today...but I can see why some people would choose to let it go, too.

There very well may be nothing more there, bad that's a comforting thought.

The only thing that is really haunting me and making me dig more is the recurring nightmare I would have as a kid.
In it, I'm being molested and all of these explicit things are happening. This was before I "knew" about sex. I also knew about cunnilingus before I knew about sex. That's why I'm suspicious.

But it really could be nothing. I really hope it is.

And I don't know if I'm ready to know if something is there.

I'm just really confused and I feel crazy.

I had vivid & recurrent dreams, nightmares & night terrors about all the sexual abuse I was subjected to while growing up.

Not until I started dealing with it in therapy as an adult did those dreams, nightmares & night terrors vanish. Of course, they'll occasionally resurface now, usually when something triggers me, and I'll have to work through them all over again.

It was quite a bewildering experience then, but as an adult who's now got years of therapy behind her, I don't find them as powerful and disturbing as they once were.



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