Part 1 of 3

It took a long time for me to come to the point that I knew for certain that simple nonsexual nudity was a good thing; and not just a good thing, but also that it was the right thing for me. In looking back on all the things I’ve done wrong or could have done better in reaching that conclusion, and on all the needless confusion and erroneous ideas that I somehow came up with along the way and then had to overcome, I’m amazed at how I could have wandered so far off course for so long. It all seems so simple and obvious now, but getting to this point was like going all the way around the world just to get to the other side of the street. Sad thing is, there are a lot of other people out there just like me who are struggling to find the right path and many will become so hopelessly lost that they’ll never find their way. I wish I could help them. Perhaps by telling some of my story, others can see how to shorten their own journey and find the truth sooner, saving themselves and those close to them some of the struggles and frustrations I’ve experienced. 

I was born the first of two boys to very loving, caring parents who were devoted to each other and their children. My father was a farmer who worked very long, hard hours running the family farm. That’s where we lived. My mother did not work outside the home - there was plenty of that right there. We were raised to believe that we were to be fully clothed all of the time except when bathing or changing. It was no big deal if another family member saw us during those times, but that was the extent of family nudity in our home. This practice wasn’t spelled out in so many words; it was simply one of those things that was taught by example.

From a very early age (pre school age), I seem to have had a desire to be naked outdoors. One of my earliest memories is of being outside playing behind some trees where I thought I was hidden from the house and then taking off my clothes. My mother found me like that. I don’t remember being punished, but I’m sure I received a good scolding at the very least. Even then, I apparently had already begun to treat my desire for simple nudity as a secret to be hidden.

As I grew a little older (first few years of school), I can recall still having a desire to be naked outdoors, but also feeling very embarrassed to be seen that way by anyone when bathing or changing. Looking back, I can see that this was the first major point of confusion and conflict between my desire to be nude and my fear of embarrassment - not only to be seen that way but also for anyone to know I even had this longing. By this time it would appear that I was already conditioned to believe that simple nonsexual nudity was a bad thing and that I must be bad for thinking about it – not that it stopped me.

In a few more years, around fifth or sixth grade, I remember developing a strong curiosity about girls. What did they look like naked? This curiosity wasn’t specifically about sex – not yet anyway. It was innocent for the most part; just a curiosity about what was different. It seemed that everything about their bodies and their sexuality was treated as a big untalked about secret. The cruelest secret is the kind you know very well is there, but you’re not allowed to know what it is. I think that’s why I became a little obsessed with it. However, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had no sisters and because we lived way out in a rural area, I was never around any girls (other than at school) for there to have ever been the possibility of accidentally or innocently seeing a girl in any state of undress.  

As a few more years went by this curiosity became further fueled by the occasional glimpse at sexually stimulating publications. I’m referring to Playboy and the like (female provocative nudity); not the hard core kind. I knew very well that this was wrong. These occasions were accidental and unplanned in the sense that I didn’t buy it or seek it out nor did I find it at home. But when I did come across it, my eyes and mind eagerly took it in to try to satisfy my curiosity and this further conditioned me to believe that nudity – any nudity - was a bad thing and that I must be bad for thinking about it. Of course, it still didn’t stop me from thinking about it.

Along came puberty, high school, and a major case of raging hormones. Although I wasn’t especially outgoing, I had a lot of friends and participated in a lot of social activities. I was a little overweight (always had been) and didn’t feel particularly good about myself, especially my appearance, but when it came to girls I would muster up my courage to interact with them and the people that I considered to be my friends were about an even mix of boys and girls. However, as was typical of boys my age, the only reason now that I could imagine for being naked with a girl was for sex and that seemed like a pie-in-the-sky impossible dream at that point. I dated occasionally once I could drive and there were a few occasions of “parking” – all very thrilling but relatively innocent and fortunately sex continued to be just a dream throughout high school.

On a separate mostly parallel track I continued my involvement with simple nonsexual nudity. Living on a large farm meant that there was a lot of work to be done, but it also meant that I was smack in the middle of a lot of remote and secluded land (two sections). In spite of my chores, I still had a good share of free time and when it was warm enough I spent plenty of it out there in the woods. I’d take off on foot by myself saying that I was going exploring and head out across the open pasture and into the seclusion of the woods. There were a number of very out of the way places where I would go, take off my clothes, and spend as much as 3 or 4 hours roaming around – sometimes for quite some distance – completely nude. On the one hand, it was such a wonderfully free way of being. On the other, because of raging hormones and the fact that I was always thinking about sex, I had an erection for much of this time that I was trekking through the woods and that created a conflict that mostly clouded what should have been an innocent freedom. Instead, I was thinking about sex and thinking that I could never be naked with anyone else – boy or girl - anywhere like this because I wouldn’t be able to avoid having a constant erection. This further conditioned me to believe that nudity was shameful and was all about sex.

Another thing that I started doing about this time was sleeping naked. My parents and brother all wore pajamas no matter what the season and it could be pretty hot even at night during the summer (no air conditioning). I would sleep in just my underwear in the summer and then one night in the dark I just took those off, too, without telling anyone, but also without ever leaving my room that way. Eventually my family found out I was doing this but nothing was ever said and it’s been a lifelong habit ever since.

I also want to add that my parents were Christians and we were raised in a home based on Christian faith and principles. Christian values were taught to us by both word and example. I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior and was baptized during my first year of high school. From birth my parents instilled in us a strong sense of right and wrong based on our faith and that sense was always present in my conscience. Because of that, I was always aware that sex before marriage was wrong, but not only could I not stop thinking about it, nearly all of my friends who were boys (and even some of the girls) talked about it all the time making the subject unavoidable and always present. Combine that with the fact that my desire for nudity was now almost completely sexually motivated and you can see the major conflict going on in my mind.

After high school, I attended a local junior college and continued to live at home. I made lots of new friends at my new school – boys and girls – and one of the girls and I really hit it off. I liked her a lot and she felt the same toward me. I asked her out, she accepted, and from that point on, she and I were a couple - my first real romantic relationship along with all the awkwardness that goes with it. Hers, too. I was strongly attracted to her both emotionally and physically as was she to me and I’m glad that the emotional progressed much faster than the physical. It wasn’t long before we were telling each other I love you.

The physical aspect of the relationship progressed more slowly, although steadily. Over a period of about eight months, we went from passionate kissing to touching on top of clothes to caressing under clothes. She, like me, still lived at home and on certain days we would go to her house when we both had time between or after classes. Her parents both worked all day. We were now in the habit of being on her bed in her room, kissing passionately, with me down to my underwear. She was still dressed. On one particular day, we were kissing and she was caressing me, her hand inside my underwear and in the midst of that she asked, “Do you mind if I look?” I would imagine that she had already had a few glimpses. She had for some time now freely explored with concentrated caressing and of course I hadn’t minded. (I was not yet so freely exploring her.) I suppose she was tired of sneaking glimpses and wanted to be in the open about it. There was a quick moment of hesitation and fear on my part as I remembered my childhood embarrassment to be seen naked, but I guess I was fighting it back, because in answer, I asked her if she wanted me to just take them off (meaning my underwear). She calmly said, “Yeah.”

We were on top of the covers as always and it was the middle of the day, so it was all definitely going to be out in the open. I was still fearful and uncertain as I rolled on to my back and bent my knees to raise myself up. I paused there for just a second as I took hold of my underwear in preparation to push them down and thought to myself, this is it – I’m about to be naked with a girl – I don’t know whats going to happen. I don’t know what she’s going to think, say, or do – I’m just going to go ahead with it. And with that I raised up slightly as I slipped them over, then pushed them all the way down and off and dropped them on the floor. Without a word we resumed kissing and she resumed caressing. I never knew exactly when she looked - I only knew that I was now completely naked – with a girl - and she accepted me like that.

When it was time to get back to school, I remember that as I got up, I had this unexpected feeling of liberation while at the same time feeling very vulnerable and extremely exposed standing there in front of her. As she sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, I felt a rapid increase in that vulnerability knowing she was looking straight at the area of me that was now at her eye level. After the past hour or so of kissing and caressing, there was no doubt that I was at the highest state of physical arousal imaginable. I could see her eyes locked on me there; I could imagine her studying every detail about that part of me that was now as openly exposed as it could possibly be in that sunlit room – especially from where she was sitting. But even in what I felt was my most vulnerable, exposed state, there was no fear and I felt no panic or urge to try to cover myself or hide my arousal or turn away. Instead I offered my hand to help her up, but it took her a couple of seconds to notice. When she did, she took my hand and looked up at me and smiled as I helped her up. Everything was OK. I had broken through a fear barrier. No one had ever seen me like that before, but I had gone through with it. It was by choice and I had done it alone, in the sense that I was naked and she was not. But unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons; and so continued my mental conditioning in the wrong direction.

We continued on for some weeks longer like that with me naked and her remaining clothed although her clothing was gradually coming off as she grew more comfortable or more courageous – I don’t know which. Finally, one day as we undressed each other – she undressing me completely and me undressing her to her bra and panties – she reached behind, unhooked and removed her bra.  I approvingly said, “You don’t have to stop now if you don’t want to.” She smiled, paused to think about it a second, and then turned around and slipped the panties down and stepped out of them. As she turned slowly back around, she folded her arms to cover her breasts. She was so beautiful standing there in her shyness and I told her so. She just smiled. I stepped forward and held out my hands as an offer to receive hers. Cautiously, she unfolded her arms, placed her hands in mine, and there we stood before each other. I felt like I was seeing a perfect work of art. She, like me, was also a little overweight, but that observation never even entered my mind. She was so beautiful; so gloriously feminine from head to toe and everywhere in between. I repeatedly told her so and her initial shyness melted completely away into trust – the same trust I felt with her.

As I think back on it now, I realize that at that moment in time, and this will seem very odd considering all that I’ve said about our physical activities, I was not thinking about sex as we stood there in front of each other. Instead I was thinking only about how beautiful she looked to me and how open and trusting I felt with her. Unfortunately that moment of innocence didn’t last long and we were soon drawn back into our passionate activities. Now all those secrets about girls that I felt had been kept from me for so long were freely being revealed to me. But instead of having my curiosities about these simple basic things about girls satisfied in matter-of-fact, innocent ways while growing up such as from innocent group activities like swimming nude or playing nude and the like, I was now finding it all out during our passionate activities that went way beyond merely seeing and observing; these activities were very close and direct and hands-on. It was a few more months more before we had sex on one of those afternoons – the first time for both of us - and even though we knew each other physically so well by then, it was still an awkward experience.

So here I was in a relationship with a girl I loved and trusted very much, but our foray into nudity had simply been a stepping stone along the path toward a sexual relationship rather than something that could have taken us toward an open innocence. We were attending church together and we were involved in a Christian student group and so we were constantly reminded (and rightly so) that our very active sex life was in direct conflict with our faith. We both felt major guilt about this (also rightly so). For me, it was as though my ideals for nudity were caught in the middle of a great tug of war with my faith on one side and my sinful desires and behaviors on the other leaving me stretched and feeling as though I was going to snap. She had somewhat similar feelings although I think nudity was all on the sinful side for her. 

The saddest part of it is that I never talked to her about any of these thoughts or feelings. I know I could have and should have and I think she might very well have understood. We probably could have worked through the issues together and maybe reached the right answer together. If only I’d tried that approach with her when we first fell in love, things might have been a lot different. I count this as a great opportunity missed and I now realize that by forcing my thoughts and desires for simple nonsexual nudity into an inner compartment of secrecy in my life from early on, it set the stage for me to hold back on sharing other personal thoughts and emotions with those closest to me – things that needed to be shared in order to have a truly close, open, honest relationship; in order to allow others to truly know me. But because I had learned to “wall off” this one thing, I could easily “wall off” anything if it seemed like the path of least resistance. Here was just one more thing in a long chain reaction resulting from secrecy.

After finishing junior college we both moved on to a four-year school. We continued our relationship for awhile, but gradually we grew apart. I had several other relationships during college – I was always a relationship kind of person. Unfortunately, they all involved an active sexual component. Again, as was now my pattern, I never talked to these girls (or anyone else) about my desire for simple nonsexual nudity, but I now know I could have and should have. I think they would have been willing participants. In fact, I reached a point where I could be naked with these girls without sex being the main motivation of the moment, although it was never far away. 

I knew that some of the people at school that I became friends and acquaintances with had their own experiences with simple nonsexual nudity. I knew of some who skinny-dipped at a few places around the area – both in daytime and nighttime. I heard of others who sometimes played strip poker just for fun (not sex). But for myself, I felt I couldn’t possibly do that without getting an erection because of my solid mental linking of nudity and sex. And as you can easily guess, I never talked to any of them about their experience. Had I done so, it might have provided a stepping stone toward re-conditioning my mind to unlink nudity and sex. Again, more secrets stuffed away deep inside - more opportunities missed. 

By this point in my life, I had put my spiritual faith completely on the back burner. My walk with the Lord was non-existent. Despite my continued enjoyment and success in school, everything else in my life was completely off course.

After graduating from college, I ended up getting a job close to home - actually in the same town where I had attended junior college. I met a girl who happened to be going to school there. Obviously, that made her several years younger than me, but we hit if off and became a couple. Like the patterns of my previous relationships, we proceeded from the emotional into the physical. However, unlike previous patterns, after a couple of years I asked her to marry me. I had no doubt she was the one. We made lots of plans, but I never discussed my thoughts and desires on simple nonsexual nudity with her. How could I not discuss with her something that was so important to me? Of all the people that I should have had that discussion with, she was by far the most important, but I still didn’t do it and thus, we proceeded into marriage with me keeping it a secret from her. Very big very major mistake.

But we were very much in love and very happy together and life was great. Within a few months we found we were pregnant and shortly after our first anniversary our first child was born. The timing wasn’t according to our plans, but it was OK – we both wanted a family. 

Time marched on. I continued to desire simple nonsexual nudity, but I also continued to keep it a secret. Why? I don’t know. I guess because it was now such an ingrained habit. I continued to sleep nude and was casual about being nude at home. But her attitude toward nudity was that it was a precursor to sex. If we made love at bedtime, she would usually sleep nude, but otherwise, she didn’t. Then as our child got a little older and when another came along, she began to pressure me not to sleep nude. I passively resisted, but still made no effort to explain myself. There was even one time when we were off by ourselves that we made love outdoors, but it wasn’t in the most risk-free area so we couldn’t linger and allow her to experience the joy of being nude outdoors. 

Both the secrecy and frustration continued to build for me. I remember driving home from work on my thirty-third birthday. It was late afternoon in summer and I thought to myself, here I am, now 33 years old and have made absolutely no progress on dealing with something that is very important to me. I knew I was letting my worries about what others – most especially my wife – would think stop me. But because I continued to think that maybe this was wrong and that maybe I was somehow evil for wanting to pursue it, I continued to suppress any motivation to move forward and I just continued with life as usual. 

A few more years slipped by and several things were happening. For one, my wife and I were both trying to regain our footing with our faith. We were on a slightly different track, but all in all this was a very good thing. The only downside of it was that it rekindled the acute conflict I felt with my desire for simple nonsexual nudity because of how I was thinking about it then. 

One bad thing that was happening during that time was that my wife was growing more and more dissatisfied with our level of communication – or rather the lack of it. We went through a couple of rounds of marriage counseling, but I only pretended to participate and our communication didn’t really improve. No surprise there. Looking back, I can see that I had become so used to keeping so many of my thoughts, hopes, and dreams to myself that I had become quite comfortable and adept at not communicating and not sharing – especially on a deep emotional level. This was just one more problem that I think manifested itself as a result of what I thought was the necessity to keep secrets all my life. 

Then over the next several years, a few things happened that began to guide me toward the correct way of thinking about simple nonsexual nudity. One was a segment done by a local TV station about a nudist camp in our region. This segment was part of a news magazine program rather than as part of the evening news report. It was a five or ten minute segment done in an informative and positive manner – not as a joke or to report a menace to society. There was footage of actual nudists – both genders, all ages - done in such a manner so that you knew they were nude but yet shown within whatever the limits were for TV broadcasting. It was all shown in a tasteful way without all the blurring of body parts that they do today. Several of the nudists were interviewed by the reporter. I was fascinated. This was my first glimpse into the reality of social nudity and from what they showed, the reality of it was that these were just normal, everyday people doing the normal, everyday things that people do when camping, but without clothes. No weirdness. No secrecy. No lewdness or provocativeness. Just no clothes. Wow, can that be right? Is that really what it’s like? I thought of calling the TV station to see if they would tell me where this place was, but I was afraid I would have to give my name or that they would want to mail me something and I was too embarrassed and afraid to let anyone know I was thinking about this. 

Another thing that happened was that in a travel magazine that my wife purchased, there was an article that listed many of the nude and topless beaches in the Caribbean. I was surprised to learn that there were so many and this led me to think that maybe this was more common than I had thought. Incidentally, my wife had purchased this magazine because one of the things she wanted us to do toward improving our relationship was to go away on a trip together. No, she wasn’t thinking about going to a nude beach. In fact, she wasn’t even aware of the article when she bought the magazine. And anyway, travel was about the last thing on my mind at that time. 

Then another thing happened that really opened the floodgates of information on what the nudist lifestyle was all about. One day I was browsing in a bookstore at a shopping center and stumbled onto a copy of Lee Baxandall’s World Guide to Nude Beaches and Resorts. I excitedly thumbed through it - quickly because I was self-conscience that others might see what I was looking at –then put it back and left. I was fascinated by what I had seen and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Here was a source of information that described in detail exactly what nudism was all about, portrayed it in pictures, and told about hundreds of locations – all written and photographed by nudists! I had to have it. In a few days I went back to the bookstore at a time that I hoped it wouldn’t be busy and with difficulty I worked up the courage to take the book to the counter and pay for it. I was so nervous about having to face the clerk (a woman), but I did it and got out of there. 

After poring though that book again and again, I knew for certain that simple nonsexual nudity was a reality, that it was a good thing, and that there were lots of people who participated in it. I felt such relief in knowing that I wasn’t alone in my beliefs and desires for this even though I was still very much alone within my own circle of family and friends. It was so good to know that my motives for desiring this were right, but I now felt that I was stuck in a very deep hole because of all the secrecy that I’d always surrounded it with. In fact, I’d even kept the purchase of this book a secret from my wife and kept it hidden away. This went on for several more years I’m sorry to admit. 

But now that I saw simple nonsexual nudity in a new light, I slowly became less fearful about somebody finding out that I was interested in it. In fact, I even broached the subject with my wife once – very casually and passively. She immediately dismissed it saying, “There’s no way you could ever do that!” implying that she was sure I’d get an erection if we ever tried it. She could only imagine being nude for sex. And although I no longer believed that the two had to be linked, I was still fearful that she might very well be right about getting an erection. So I let it go. Back to life as usual. Back to secrecy.

END - Part 1 of 3

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