I think I was 13 or 14. As I mentioned in my post, it was the same time i started to feel (romantic) attraction.

The "how" is that I fantasized about young girls, despite my age. That and I liked loli

I don't even know if I'd label myself a MAP, since it's sort of like, an exception almost. Not something I ever think about for the most part, but my one "partner" (not sure what else to call her) is intra age 14 (We are similar in terms of chrono). It doesn't effect my attraction to her much, but considering I do see her as such, I suppose I could be a MAP. It's not something I think about too much, but, it's there in a way.

I was 12, I think, maybe 13. I don't know if I should name it, but I discovered a naturism pictures newsgroup. Not porn, but close enough. I thought for a long time it was purely physical attraction — school really soured me on children, and I had little exposure to them besides TV for a long time. It's just in the last year or so that people on fedi and my brother's kids helped me get past that.

Can't remember where I have and haven't told this story yet, so here goes again I suppose.

The topic of attraction is quite vagued for me, because of trauma I have a mind-body disconnection. Which means my expression of sexual and aesthetic attraction is through fantasies and passive admiration only.

Anyway, I remember showing interest in sex quite young (10-ish). I started to write and draw porn, and I would also try to look for it online. That's where the fantasizing started too. I'd come up with elaborate plots and abusive intimate scenarios. All of these metaphysical people would just pop in my head and they'd have whole lives. They were attracted to each other. These people were of all ages, kids, teens, adults, middle aged adults, elderly. They weren't always fabricated, sometimes I'd use real people or fictional characters, but as my own 'headcanons'.

Of course since I exist on this spinning orb and therefor parttake in the passage of time against my will, I started aging, and I started hearing hateful things towards pedophiles. I tried really hard to make my fantasies 'age appropriate', but I just realized that I was missing the inclusion of youth. Sexual thoughts of children arouse me, depictions of children are attractive to me, and the MAP community accepts me. So even though I don't personally wanna date children, I am proud to call myself a MAP!