Not just catholics - I think it's fairly normal for girls to discover their sexual feelings (or at least those parts of their bodies that feel good to touch) very early on. I for one discovered my clitoris at a
very young age, and I doubt that I am in any way unique in this
There shouldn't anything surprising in it. The nerves are there since we born as well as some physical parts of arousal. Boys have strong erections when we are 5. It's mostly because body needs practice and increased blood flow is physiologically needed to keep the tissue properly oxidized. There's no deeper arousal involved or ability to feel it, but that body-part feels different, so for curiosity, we like to play with it. That's how nature want's it to be done.
In a puberty, hormonal activity kicks in, giving our bodies ability to get aroused, sensitizing the nerves and multiplying the feelings by few order of magnitude. Mental part develops later, and wrong kind of influence can do lots of harm in early phase. In modern society, 15 year old is not ready for a sex with adult, no matter how mature the body looks like and how many years he/she have masturbated daily or more often. Something has probably gone wrong by then, because modern society don't offer good environment for healthy development. Rather than being made to deny sexuality for <18 years old, we should learn to understand it and try to learn how to fix problems. I can quite safely say that most people here haven't gone through healthy sexual development. Some still suffer from it and some have learned to live with it or even use as a tool. Besides sharing fantasies, this forum could be very good place to share experiences and knowledge. I don't mind adding 10 years on age when doing so, if it makes some people feel more comfortable. When talking about these things, we should avoid over-sexualizing younger people and building unrealistic fantasies around them. What has happen, have done it typically because long chain of events and our memories are colored by our minds. Sexual interaction between two(or more) people is much more complex, and that's the skill we should learn to live happy life. This is my idea how it should go:
In a puberty, we develop ability to get aroused and start to explore that ability through masturbation. We have to teach our bodies how to have an orgasm and start to connect the dots on the mental side. Hormones like endorphins and adrenaline have clear influence how we feel and they become important part of the arousal. From nature point of view, this probably encourages us to expand our experiences with opposite sex, which can be quite scary and also embarrassing. Things being done when you wake up in the middle of the night with strange ache and maybe stiffness between your legs are not logical and makes you feel that there are something wrong with you. Though, there's great willingness and fear to share this with your friends or with other sex.
I think that while we are learning how to get aroused and have an orgasm, we should start having more activities with boys and girls together. Not anything like dating, but sports and everyday activity, which involves physical contact and some level of nudity to make us learn how it feels to be touched when you may be aroused, and develop our fantasies around it. I have a memory from one of the party we had at beginning of high-school. We were swimming and there was a smooth curvy rock under water, covered with extremely slippery algae. Water was about knee high on top of it and deep around, so you could swim on it and barely stood up. We had game where boy and girl climbed top of it and tried to push each others down. It was not about strength, but balance, timing and skill, and you had to lean on the other to have any change at all. Boys and girls were surprisingly even and it was extremely fun, especially when the mood came up and encourage raised (along with some other things, restrained by our swimming pants). Later on, after some doze of alcohol, some of us went into sauna together, and we were naked. Without alcohol, that would have been pretty good and beneficial experience for many years earlier.
In that situation, there was excuse to touch, within some (bending) limits, of course. You had opportunity to feel, but no obligation for anything. Everyone could challenge anyone, no matter if you were skinny or heavier or how you looked. Some girls felt surprisingly strong and used their strength, some others felt like they didn't have muscles at all. If you grabbed them by the arm, it went where-ever you pulled it, with little or no resistance, giving very little support for your balance. Those parties gave lot to think about and were 100x better than awkward date in too early age, where you don't know what to do and even if you do, don't feel like doing it.
So, after having lots of rich fantasies, we should start dating and have some intimate time with our chosen one. Not to have sex and do something we have seen on porn movie, or being told by older sibling or thing writing in the internet, but let out bodies learn to enjoy what is being done to us, and not what we do to ourselves. In a masturbation, our minds and physical stimulation is synchronized. It's a very strong alliance, and easily makes us ignore other aspects, which are important in a sex between couples. Problems become worse if some high stimulus sex-toys are being used. We should use lots of time to enrich our experiences. To be touched and aroused intentionally, but not all the way through. Just to get us into the right mood and hone our skills to reach an orgasm later by ourselves, with our mid full of memories and our imagination working hard with all we experienced.
We shouldn't masturbate because we feel horny and want orgasm and we know how to get there. We should masturbate because we are horny for something we did with someone and we earn a reward from that. Pleasure without effort can easily lead to addiction, and it's not good to our minds. From evolution point of view, that makes sense. We are encouraged to put our bodies into line to achieve something and pleasure works as an encouragement and reward. Abusing the reward mechanism, can lead to depression. The brain chemistry involved is complex and we don't fully understand it yet, but as a simplified mechanism, pleasure releases dopamine and it's existence in our bodies tends to drop serotonin and dopamine levels in long run. Effort and pain releases other chemicals that works as a counter force. That leads to interesting curiosity point, which is worth of discussion in some other thread, maybe?
We should try to masturbate different ways and avoid strong physical stimulation or fixation in early phases. For boys it means trying something else than other hand in a fist and other squeezing balls, and for girls it means no vibrators and no front finger play only. I remember some of my early experiences like soaping the shower room floor and rubbing myself against it. No way to have orgasm from it now, but then it worked perfectly. That phase was just too short, because the conventional methods were found quite fast. Now I wish I'd have knowledge and opportunities to take most out of those times.
Nature made teens horny to push them try everything and learn the right things without much knowledge about anything. In modern society, things are much different and we have a big challenge of having long and healthy sex life, preferably with same partner. That's a goal we should work for, and our society, our rules and our teachings should support it. Now there are lots of different rules in different cultures and religions. Many of them seems to work totally opposite, compared what's seems to be best. For me, they seems to be based on individual assumptions and beliefs, rather than serious work or comprehensive studies. That's probably because people don't talk about these things much and best cause of actions depends on individual and on the environment we are living. Nowadays we have quite long time between physical sexual maturity and the time where we are really ready for sexual relationships. It's much longer than nature have intended to, and there are many pitfalls to fell into.
There's one important rule, with very good reasons, which should be clear for everyone, That's protecting minors from sexual influence before they have developed into level where they can handle it. Too bad that reasons are hardly never explained and everyone are supposed to understand it automatically. Based on how things have gone lately, it seems that hardly no-one really understand even a small part of it. I think I have a hunch, but I have lived only a bit over half life in one culture, so I can't honestly say I know much. There are few things, though, which seems quite certain:
Kids shouldn't be exposed on sexual influence before their own development and experiences have given them base to understand what they see or hear. Outside influence should enrich their imagination rather than make them skip the most important part of discovery and learning and push them into something they think is a key to happiness. Nudity or seeing genitals, is not sexual influence. It's nature's reality and everyone should be familiar with it through all phases of the development. Observing sexual behavior can be confusing, whether there are clothes on or not. For that part, modern society fails pretty badly.
Sexual interaction with adults or with those who are in higher level of their own development can be really bad. It usually skips the important part of exploration and discovery and easily leads to fixation of certain things. Similar problem also arises, if the 'knowledge' of the sex highly exceeds experience. It is very common situation in nowadays. Consider situation where 15 year old girl have sex with older man, who really knows how to pull from the right strings. We tend to get bored with sex, that's also one nature's unfortunate truths. By starting with relations which really turns the socks on our feets, what's left when that magic starts to fade and hormone levels drop, not much but a downhill. With wide base of experiences and fantasies and with ability to adapt, it's much easier to maintain interest and happiness. We are made to live and commit into life with a partner, but not to have sex with one. After all other tricks have been used, it might be the time to grab a switch or a whip and see what can be done with it... Anyway, it's always god to have as many tricks as possible.
When thinking about problems we have now, there are many. In most cultures, there's not much natural and healthy influence between boys and girls. Awareness about sex comes way before actual development and sex related things are seen dirty and forbidden and have to be done on secrecy. There are huge pressure and lots of expectations what should be done, how it should feel, how the body should look and what kind of boyfriend or girlfriend one should have. Some start to 'date' before they are 11, some are allowed to do it only when they turn 18. In some cultures, masturbation is encouraged because it's healthy, in some other cultures, it's strictly forbidden because it's evil. For my opinion, the truth lays in between, depending how and why it's done, as explained before.
In my country, when I was young, first sex experiences were typically around 14-16, with maybe 2/3's of 16 year old have lost their virginity. Sex education was pretty good and there were very few unwanted pregnancies in any age. However, it seemed obvoius that maturity for sexual relationships wasn't there, but need for sexual experiences was high. Few times when the situation was right, things went as I think they shoud, but society didn't encouraged or guide to that direction. Quite often sex was done because you wanted to try it, not because you have gone through the process that makes you ready for it. For some, it was a way to get attention.
What comes to this thread, I have always have a great need to understand myself and the others. Fantasies are nice and other people's fantasies can be interesting, but nothings beats real experiences and the situation which have lead to them. Therefore, waiting with interest what to follow.
