When I was about 16 I had to delay my ordination to Priest because I confessed to porn and masturbation. Because of the delay, I had to tell my dad, who then had to tell my mom and we had this big crying pow-wow.
Fast forward about 6 months, I had been pretty good about staying away, however I had slipped up a couple times.
One day I came home to see my bishop, his executive secretary, and my parents standing around our family computer. I went upstairs to my room, but listened intently to what was going on. I heard the moment they discovered some of my browsing history (I didn’t know how to clear it).
15 minutes later my parents came up, we talked and cried for 3 hours, my sister at some point came up because she suspected what was going on, and got the full scoop. It was humiliating and devastating.
My parents took me to an anti-porn conference, where I ran into some other bishops from my stake who all knew my parents well (presumably they were getting useful information for others, but who knows). One of them was the father of one of my good friends, and it was incredibly awkward.
I had to read books about how to overcome my addiction. For about an entire year after that I didn’t look down when I was in the shower because I was afraid to look at my penis. I had tried so many times to stop masturbating and inevitably it just kept happening to the point where I decided to try something new. I also had a bad habit of popping my knuckles, and I asked God that if I could get that under control if he would remove my sexual addictions. Of course, his end of the bargain was not kept, and I eventually started popping my knuckles again.
HERE’S THE IRONIC PART: It wasn’t until I was 20 and halfway through my mission when I learned what masturbation actually was and tried it for the first time.
All this time I had been confessing to masturbation, but all I was really doing was getting aroused. The “porn” I was looking at, some might still consider porn, mostly bikini pics and the occasional topless pic, but never any videos or actual sex, obviously because I didn’t understand what semen even was.
This story is incredibly embarrassing to tell, but also very infuriating to think about. I had to do so much repenting and all that inner turmoil on, what I consider now to be, far less “deviant” than absolutely normal adolescent behavior.