Dear Prudence,
I need advice about something that I can’t ask anyone else. I have been with my boyfriend for two years. He is charming, funny, and my best friend. We both have good careers, share common interests, and love each other very much. However, he confessed something horrible to me the other night. He grew up on a farm and ranch, with a very conservative and religious family, and was home-schooled. “Ray” did not receive an early education about sex and was not allowed to talk about it or ask questions. At age 12, while looking for answers on the Internet, he found porn. Some of it was bestiality. He then participated in these atrocious activities from age 12 to 15. Ray went to public high school at 15, finally learned about sex, and found girls. He has not been back to this practice for more than 10 years and feels an incredible sense of regret, shame, and guilt about it. I am the first person he has ever told. I am shocked, disgusted, and fearful of what this means for his psyche. He refuses to see a therapist. I feel so overwhelmed by this confession that I don’t know what to do. Should I have packed my bags that night? Do I seek counseling? Can we move forward? Please help me process this.

—Dismayed

Dear Dismayed,
There are many dangers described in this letter. One is parents who raise a child with a punitive approach to normal desires and keep him isolated from his peers. We also as a society should be paying more attention to the insidious effect ubiquitous—and notably vile—pornography has on the sexual psyches of young people. Finally, your letter is about the risks one takes in telling one’s deepest, darkest secret to a beloved. Your boyfriend felt he couldn’t carry this burden alone. It’s too bad he couldn’t go to an actual confessional, or the secular equivalent—a therapist—and unburden himself with someone who would keep his secret and give him needed absolution. Instead, you now have images in your head of your boyfriend figuring out on his own the birds, bees, and beasts. Yes, his past is shocking, but I don’t think it says anything about him except that he was a young man with normal impulses that were directed in an abnormal way because of his circumstances. But now you’re looking at him as some kind of deviant. If the facts are as you describe, I don’t think he is. What’s most important is that he is, as you say, filled with regret, shame, and guilt. He loves you so much that he felt you should know everything about him, and he clearly was hoping you would be the person to offer him pardon. I hope you can. Surely you aren’t “fearful” about him running off with a friend’s dog. Just because I suggested that these kinds of secrets might best be told to a therapist, doesn’t mean your boyfriend needs therapy for this, or would benefit from dwelling on it. He’s revulsed by his youthful violations, and you know it won’t happen again. I hope you can tell him, and mean it, that you appreciate he trusted you enough to reveal all, and that while you were initially shaken by the news, you know that it’s simply something that’s in the past, and doesn’t mean anything to your future.

—Prudie