I was in denial about being a MAP until rather recently, maybe a month ago or so. Before then I would consume lolicon content but I told myself that I wasn’t attracted to irl kids. This was not true at all, but I managed to stay in denial about it for years.
For most of my life I always made a conscious effort to avert my eyes whenever I saw a young girl. I was afraid to look at them I think, because I would have had to confront the fact that I am attracted to prepubescent girls. I had gotten used to doing this, but one day a MAP friend I had been talking to online recommended I try looking at a girl. He reassured me that simply looking and even having sexual thoughts wasn’t immoral, which really helped encourage me to actually look at a young girl in real life. At this point I more or less knew I was a map, but making an effort to actually look at a girl was what I needed to confirm it in a way that I couldn’t deny.
I’d love to hear about others’ experiences with accepting that they’re a MAP!
Yes and no - I’ve known my sexual attraction to kodocon is the same thing as my sexual attraction to real kids since the first moment I saw my first loli, and accepted that as fine from the start. But I was in denial about being romantically attracted to real children until late last year, because I was still anti-c and repressing my pride. It turns out that those things were also blocking up my real emotions, which in turn, was depressing me a lot. Repression is unhealthy - who’d have ever thought? It’s been awesome to get involved with the extended pediverse community and finally work all of that out of myself.