Unfiltered Story #328192

I’m luck enough to have four times the mothers as most children get, and all of them great parents. My original mothers divorced when I was around five and both ended up marrying different women. Luckily the divorce was amicable and all four mothers still got along well and did a much better job of co-parenting me then seems to be the norm for kids of divorced couples. I also had an Uncle on my ‘Mom’s side that liked kids and would come over to spend time with my sisters and me at least once a month, he was fun and we all looked forward to his visits.

Sometime when I was around 8 or 9 my mom told me of their plans to have another child, the conversation migrated to the mechanics of how that would happen and apparently I asked some precocious questions my mom was uncertain how to answer but did her best. I only vaguely remember that conversation, but I remember the one right after it. my Mom had texted my ‘Mama’, ie her ex wife, and told mama about our conversation. Apparently mama wasn’t happy I’d been told as much as I had without her being present and wanted to do a call over speaker phone with me to talk about it.

I again don’t quite remember everything I said with my mama during the follow up call, but I distinctly remember how I felt. She didn’t say anything horrible or condemning to me, yet somehow she took what had seemed to me a normal, if slightly informative, conversation and managed to somehow make it feel wrong and me feel guilty for having it. That wasn’t her intent, she is a wonderful mother and while not quite as open as my mom was never a conservative puritan or overbearing about it usually. However, this day I was left feeling uncomfortable at the attention I was getting and wishing my mom hadn’t reported our conversation to mama, or perhaps that I hadn’t had the ‘bad’ conversation at all.

My uncle had been visiting the day of this conversation, and as usual for his visits he came to say good night when I went to bed. He must have seen I was a bit upset because he reassured me that there was nothing wrong with our conversation and then offered that If I ever had any ‘guy stuff’ I wanted to talk about I could come to him and he’d give me honest answers. Still uncomfortable with how the later conversation had ended I asked him if he would tell my mothers if I talked to him and he assured me he would get permission to keep any conversation private if I came to him.

I remember this last part so distinctly because he didn’t let me forget it. While it didn’t come up every visit he would occasionally give me a polite reminder that he was available for ‘guy talk’, and that he had gotten permission to keep any talks private between us. When puberty came along my uncle mysteriously appeared not long after my first wet dream to have a ‘guy talk’, I didn’t realize it at the time but presumably my mom saw the evidence of said dream in the laundry and called him in. He assured me it was normal and shared stories of his most inconvenient wet dream, in a car during a very long road trip with his family, and tips on how to avoid a similar situation for me. He went on to give plenty of useful, and very honest, answers about all the other fun issues I had with puberty.

Similar conversations happened over the next few years, always he stressed I could ask anything of him and he would be made and would keep it all private. At first he had to initiate the conversations as I still was uncertain about talking to an adult, but once It became clear he really was honest and not judging me I started to feel more comfortable asking him questions. He taught me so much about things I would never have been comfortable talking to any of my mother’s about.

However the most important part of this story comes when I was an older teenager and my girlfriend and I were talking about finally having sex. I debated rather I could trust even my uncle with that plan, but finally decided he’d proven himself trustworthy enough in the past and so I spoke to him about it. He told me that while he would prefer I wait he knew it was common at this age and it was my decision, so rather then telling me not to he would tell me how to do it right. I got a long talk about consent, he made it very clear the only thing I could do to make him angry when it came to sex was to pressure a girl into it who wasn’t ready.

I also got a talk about birth control. I’d been planning to use some old hand me down condoms, but thanks to this talk I realized they were too old and were not stored right and thus not safe to use, and that I hadn’t known how to use them properly anyways. He made sure I had new condoms I knew how to use, and told me that while he expected me to always use protection If I every messed up and didn’t or had a problem with failed birth control I should call him immediately so he could help, and if I was brave enough to call him he wouldn’t be mad at me even if I was stupid enough to not use protection.

And well I’m sorry to admit he knew me too well because if was less then a year later that I got caught up in the moment and failed to use a condom. As soon as it was over I freaked out, and I immediately contact my uncle, who got my girlfriend the morning after pill and brought it to us as soon as he could, and true to his word while he wasn’t happy I didn’t use protection he mostly told me he was proud I admitted to it and called him to fix things rather then try to hide it and hope nothing happened.

I’m in college now and a friend recently had an unplanned pregnancy that’s causing her quite a bit of difficulty. I’m trying to be supportive of her, but the whole experience makes me think back to my uncle. While I’d planned to use birth control I clearly hadn’t known anything about how to do it right until he told me. Even with all is advice I still managed to be stupid and had to call him in to help fix my mistakes. Thinking back it seems very plausible that I’d have ended up a teenage father if I didn’t have an uncle I could trust to talk to about these things. I just can’t help but think how much I owe him for being there and being the one adult I could trust to be truly honest with me.