Help! I’m Attracted to My Teenage Son’s Teammates.
I need to quit the carpool.
BY SLATE STAFFDEC 04, 20228:00 AM
Dear Prudence,
I’m a wife and mother with a small at-home business and a fairly normal life. One of my tasks is sharing carpool duties for my teenage son and his sports team buddies to and from practice and competitions. As it happens, my husband and I haven’t had sex for over two years due to various medical and psychological issues. My husband’s aware of the problem, but it’s been very stressful, and we need to make changes. The other day I picked up my son’s teammates, and I felt a surge of sexual attraction. I was horrified! I would rather cut off my limbs than cause harm to a minor—or cheat on my husband, for that matter. I want to quit carpool because these feelings make me ashamed and deeply uncomfortable. But then I’d have to come up with a plausible explanation that would still enable my son to be in the carpool. If I drive him solo, everyone will wonder what the problem is. Can you think of a solution here?
I agree that you need to quit the carpool, both for the sake of your own mental health and in the best interests of the kids. If they were capable of driving themselves, you’d have mentioned that as a possible solution, so my read here is that these kids are not in the 16-to-18 range. One potential pitfall I want to help you avoid is this: that you’ll feel like you can’t possibly tell anyone, not even a therapist, that you were attracted to teenagers; that the best thing you can do is keep this to yourself forever; and that in order to keep anyone from asking invasive questions, you have to keep driving the kids to practice and relying solely on your own willpower and self-loathing to get through the next couple of years. That is a recipe for disaster. Tell the other parents that, effective immediately, you’re no longer available to drive the kids to practice. Even if it’s inconvenient, the absolute worst thing that can happen in that scenario is that a couple of student athletes miss a few practices. No one is going to lose a job or die or fail to get into college. The kids will be fine, and the other parents will figure something out. You do not have to go into details about why. Don’t apologize more than once, and then just say it’s not possible for you to drive any longer.
The most important thing is not that you find a face-saving explanation for why you cannot drive the carpool again. The most important thing—after you make sure you’re not alone with the kids anymore—is that you find a therapist you can start talking to honestly about this right away. You haven’t done anything wrong. You didn’t choose to feel the way you did in the car, nor did you seek out any sexual gratification with your son’s friends. But if you continue to drive these boys, and if you continue to connect your attraction to them with your own frustrations about your marriage and to mentally wallow in shame, you will create a situation where doing something wrong will get easier and easier. The good news is that you’re a sane adult in full possession of her faculties, and you have the power to exit that situation right now. —Danny M. Lavery
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Have women ever thought about just not acting on every little desire that pops into their heads? They made an entire movie about this; it's called American Beauty. Just do what old creepy dudes do and wait until they're 18.
