Is a Glory Hole a Sin? Asking for a Friend (And a Priest)

What if the Answer isn’t as Holy as We’d Like?

What is a glory hole? If you somehow missed our historical masterpiece on the subject, educate yourself before stepping into this moral minefield. It’s a fair question to ask… is a glory hole a sin, or just a misunderstood act of impulse in a judgmental world?

I’ve always found it fascinating that the same man who’ll beg forgiveness on Sunday morning might be on his knees by Sunday lunch. Just not in prayer. One hole in the wall offers salvation. The other offers release. One sends you to hell. The other feels like heaven.

It’s funny, isn’t it? A man can cheat on his husband or wife with a nameless stranger through a hole in a public toilet, wipe his mouth, then whisper “Hail Mary” and feel cleaner than he did before. Because it wasn’t real, right? You didn’t see him. You didn’t say his name. It doesn’t count if you’re anonymous and technically only made eye contact with a partition.

Some people confess their sins. Others suck them through plywood.

But here’s the uncomfortable question your priest probably won’t answer: which one actually works better? If your soul’s black with shame, is it the oral release or the holy one that gives you your life back?

And what if the answer isn’t as holy as we’d like?

The Anonymous Confessional

When I was a kid, my parents dragged me to church every Sunday. The incense gave me headaches, the sermons made me question the intelligence of grown men, and the confessional booths… well, let’s just say that those were something else entirely. You’d step into a little wooden box, kneel down, and wait for the shadowy silhouette of a priest to slide open a tiny window. I was meant to say I’d lied about homework or stolen a biscuit. But I was usually thinking about who was on the other side of the wall. His voice was soft, older, soothing and kind. Sometimes he’d even sound a little impatient, but always disembodied. As a kid with too much imagination and nowhere to put it, I started thinking: what if he wasn’t a priest? What if it wasn’t a church?

Years later, when I stepped into a very different kind of booth, the memory hit me like a Catholic flashback. I knelt. I waited. A wall between us, a hole in the centre, and a stranger I’d never see again. This time, I didn’t whisper sins. I committed one. Maybe two, depending on your denomination.

That’s when it hit me. Glory holes and confessionals are disturbingly alike. Both demand silence, shame, and submission. Both involve kneeling for a faceless man behind a partition. And both are places where men go to unload things they can’t say out loud.

Maybe the real difference isn’t what you’re doing in the dark, but what you tell yourself it means. In a confessional, I begged for forgiveness I wasn’t sure I deserved. At a glory hole, I never asked for anything. One was a ritual of shame, the other, of pleasure. But both gave me something I needed: a brief moment where I wasn’t pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

Is It Cheating If You Don’t Know Who They Are?

Why do men cheat? It’s never just about sex. Sometimes it’s about escape and sometimes it’s about silence. Let’s say you’re married. Committed. Maybe you even share a Netflix account and pretend to like their mother. But one night, curiosity slips its hand into your pocket. You find yourself standing in a dim, anonymous venue, staring at a wall with a hole in it. There’s no name, no face, no conversation. Just a place and a choice. You step forward and… something happens. Then, before you know it, it’s over and you leave, and the only thing you know for certain is that neither of you will see the other again. (If you want to know what happens before you leave… check out The Hole in the Door).

So is that cheating?

Some would say yes, and they wouldn’t blink. No face doesn’t mean no betrayal. You still let someone else touch you, be inside you, or taste something that wasn’t on the menu at date night. Trust was broken, while an invisible line was crossed. And it doesn’t matter how anonymous it felt or how quick it was, you didn’t just betray a person… you betrayed a promise. If your partner had done the same thing, would you still be calm? Would you shrug it off as a victimless experiment?

But then comes the harder question. What actually defines cheating? Is it the body, or the meaning behind the act? Is it the climax, or the intent? If you don’t know their name, their face, or their story… if the entire encounter feels more like an impulse than a memory… does it still carry the same weight as emotional intimacy? Is it worse than sexting someone you actually know, someone you’ve been fantasising about for weeks?

When it comes to men cheating, some draw their lines at emotions. Others at orgasms, while a few delude themselves into thinking those two don’t overlap. But the messier truth is that cheating isn’t universal. It lives in the grey space between what you did, what you meant to do, and how much you lied about it afterwards. (Check out From Glory Holes to Grey Zones).

The bigger issue isn’t what happened on the other side of the wall. It’s the silence you carry home. The way your stomach clenches when your partner asks how your day was. The way you start rewriting your own memory to make it feel less wrong. That’s what sticks and what burns later, when the thrill is gone and all you’re left with is a secret and a stranger’s breath still clinging to your skin.

So maybe the real question isn’t whether it’s cheating. Maybe it’s this: if you have to ask, aren’t you already holding the answer?

Glory, Guilt, and God’s Receptionist

Catholic guilt is a hard thing to outgrow… even when the robe’s off and your knees are dirty for different reasons. There’s a reason religion keeps showing up in this conversation. Because for a lot of men, especially the ones raised on Catholic guilt and Protestant shame, the act of using a glory hole isn’t just about sex. It’s about absolution. Or defiance and often, both.

The confessional booth is supposed to cleanse you. You walk in dirty, and walk out forgiven. You confess your sins to a man behind a screen, he whispers some Latin back at you, and poof… you’re free to sin again by next Friday. It’s spiritual laundering. An emotional car wash with a priest in place of the scrubbers.

But glory holes? They don’t offer forgiveness. Just the raw, silent purge of a different kind. A release of tension and a scream without sound. It doesn’t ask why you came, nor does it doesn’t care. It just takes, gives, finishes, and fades.

And somehow, for some people, that’s more honest than kneeling in a pew whispering “I touched myself during choir practice” to a man in robes.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth no one wants to say out loud: some men feel more seen through a plywood hole than they ever did in church. They’re not looking for redemption, they want reality. They want to let the mask slip, even if it’s in the shadows and to kneel for something they chose, not something they were guilted into.

And let’s be real. Both experiences end with you walking out, trying not to make eye contact, wondering if that lingering ache in your chest is shame or something holier.

From Kneeling for the Lord to Kneeling for Larry-from-Stall-3

It’s funny how the body remembers positions. Knees on cold tile, hands clasped, head bowed. As a kid, that posture meant “Our Father, who art in heaven.” As an adult? Sometimes it just means Larry from stall three is about to bless me with something decidedly unholy.

But the bigger question is this: what are we actually seeking when we get down on our knees? Is it forgiveness? Connection? Or is it just the most primal form of forgetting?

Glory holes don’t offer eye contact, don’t make promises and don’t care if you cry or if you fake it. And yet, like all phenomenal sex, they leave behind a mess no bleach can reach. They are, in many ways, the most honest relationship some men have. In the world of anonymous sex, there’s no eye contact, no expectations, no good morning texts. Just impulse, transaction, and escape.

And that’s exactly what makes them so sacred to some and so scandalous to others. If you’ve spent your life being told that God is always watching, then vanishing into a place where no one sees you can start to feel like salvation.

Or damnation.

Depends who you ask. And how loudly you moaned.

Is a Glory Hole a Sin? Or Just the Realest Kind of Confession?

So what’s the verdict? Is a glory hole a sin? Is it cheating? Or is it just another kind of confession, whispered not to God but to the anonymous curve of a stranger’s thigh?

Both booths ask the same question in different accents: What are you here to let go of? Is it your guilt? Your secrets? Or perhaps your pants?

Because maybe the real obscenity isn’t what happens through that hole, but the shame we’re told to feel about wanting it. Maybe what’s holy isn’t the space itself, but what it allows us to release… fear, repression, expectation, or just a very long week’s worth of stress.

And let’s be honest. Whether you’re kneeling for the Lord or for Larry-from-Stall-3, if you walk away feeling lighter, quieter, more forgiven, then… who’s really judging?

Probably just your priest. And even he’s wondering if Stall 3 is available after mass.

If this kind of sin, shame, and sexuality sounds familiar, you might enjoy reading my memoir titled, Good Luck Getting Rid of Me.

Amen.

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