Dear Troubleshooter:
I'm a female high school student preparing for my university entrance exams. I'm worried by my sexual feelings toward a teacher.
The teacher is single and in his 30s. He's not so popular among other students, and he's not handsome at all. He is absolutely an ordinary man. However, I can't help feeling this way about him.
My heart first skipped a beat when I saw his thick fingers because they seemed manly to me. Since then, he has gradually occupied my mind.
I want to talk with him more, so I pretend to be puzzled and go ask him questions about a subject that is actually one of my strong suits. I also seek his advice about human relationships and other things that are not related to my studies. He sincerely listens to me about anything.
My desire to be physically intimate with him, if allowed and only after my graduation, is steadily increasing. I feel ridiculous and ashamed -- why do I have such feelings when I have exams to take? What should I do?
B, Chiba Prefecture
Dear Ms. B:
I had to smile, remembering my days of taking entrance exams. In my case, the man was a teacher at a cram school. He wasn't handsome nor popular among female students. He was a quiet graduate school student in a science course who wore glasses.
On the days he lectured, my heart would pound from the morning, and I went to the cram school with questions that weren't essential to ask. As I would soon take entrance exams, I couldn't reveal my feelings to him, and I sometimes cried while listening to music.
It's natural for young women your age to fall in love with men who are close to them and seem like they can be relied on. The situation has been depicted in lots of novels and songs. You don't need to think it's shameful nor wrong to imagine various things about a sexual affair. It's proof that you're growing up to be an adult, so you don't need to worry.
It's probably difficult for you to pretend not to understand things in one of your strong subjects, so how about looking for collections of past exam questions for universities that you want to enroll in? Doing so can be useful for the entrance exams, so it serves two purposes. And to keep him as a favorite teacher, I want you to concentrate on studying for now.
By the way, my feelings toward the cram school teacher disappeared immediately after I passed my entrance exams. I've heard it's called "misattribution of arousal" when people tend to have romantic feelings toward people they meet in highly tense situations, such as crossing a cable suspension bridge together. Today I think my experience was absolutely in line with that theory.
Hazuki Saisho, writer
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