Scarleteen

Hey. So I have been masturbating for a couple of years at this point being 16, and the thought of privacy just occurred to me.

I recalled having some close calls of my dorm mates discovering me back when I was 14, with the "shadow of someone doing the motion" spreading around the room for a bit, but luckily none connected it to me, so since then I try to be more private by having the water run with YouTube playing in the background to mask the sound, and cleaning the floor with soap when I come, but mostly I just edge for the convenience, but I still have a lingering thought that I could be discovered at any moment and the rumor spreading and ruining me, disallowing me from fully relaxing and making be constantly be on edge for noises. How can I improve my privacy in this situation? Thanks for any help!

Note: I live in an all boys dorm with up to 30 boys per dorm wing with semi-private bathrooms where there is a small gap in the bottom of the door and at the top of all the shower rooms, so I am anxious that someone, potentially my mates, would look as a prank, as that has happened before.

Hi there, Noop27751. Sorry to hear you don't have a lot of privacy and even when you do, your peers don't seem to respect that. It's unfortunate boys at this age think it's funny to invade someone's privacy and make fun of them for what they do in that privacy. I wonder if you have any time in which you can use the bathrooms when there aren't a bunch of people around?

Unfortunately, you might not be able to fully just relax and enjoy your privacy for the time being, and without knowing the exact situation such as schedules and stuff, it's hard for me to give you suggestions about finding more private time/space. You are almost certainly not the only person in your dorm who masturbates, so they must be finding it somehow. Are you ever alone in the bedroom? Maybe that could be another option if the bathroom situation doesn't work.

Yeah, the times I do shower and masturbate are probably the least active times of the shower, barely anyone else. So this is probably the best I can do there, and about doing it on the bed, it's the "multiple bunk beds next to each other" type of situation, so that is a no-go.

Hi Noop27751, I hope it's ok for me to jump in here!

I think Sofi's suggestions were great. I also want to reiterate that I am sorry that you have so little privacy at the moment. I did want to share some articles with you from our site that don't exactly go over your situation but may offer some support.

Deep Cover: Tips for Managing Anxiety or Privacy Worries When Masturbating at Home

How can I masturbate without my parents knowing?

Hopefully these articles can allow you to se how common the anxieties you are facing are and maybe help alleviate some of the stress in the future!

Thanks for the support articles! While they don't fit my situation 100%, I could use some of the points in them to my advantage, with some I am actually already doing, also with bonus points for when I am at home, I can fully use them.

Though my concern about invasion of privacy still stands, I actually caught a boy trying to look over the doors into the bathrooms, though it is not a targeted attack, just looking through every room, I managed to get him caught on camera and am thinking of reporting him to the dorm teacher, should I?

Hello, Noop27751! I'm glad the articles Amber suggested were of some use!

It really isn't okay to look over doors into bathrooms and disrespect other people's privacy--you definitely could report this incident to your dorm teacher.

As for whether you should... I don't know what the environment at your dorm is like. If you can generally expect this teacher to be reliable and helpful while dealing with problems, I would lean towards talking to them about it.