Pre-Porn Fetishes

Hi, there. I'm not a psychologist, but fetishes all come from somewhere. If you can recall your first exposure to your fetish and the circumstances around it. Usually there's some kind of shame; shame and disgust, I keep reading, are felt simultaneously with arousal as a soothing mechanism for the former feelings. A sex therapist, if able, could help you to work through the emotional entanglement. Just feeling like it's normal to have a glitch can help release the taboo attraction for you, or at least manage it.

 

If it's any consolation, I have a strong lifelong pre-P fetish, too. And it's something that I would never be able to achieve IRL, and that makes me so sad. The really awful man I was seeing that had a strong PMO addiction he was proud of and talked about all the time, like I'd never compare, had a couple bizarre fetishes that he'll never be able to fulfill IRL.

It's so important for good sex to be present with our lovers and get off on them. I'm praying that I can recondition myself to be stimulated enough by other things that I won't be such at the fetish's mercy.

 

Now the fact that it has become an addiction might actually be from porn strengthening the neural pathways. In which case, I bet abstaining from porn will weaken the strong addictive behaviors.

I had fetishes before porn myself, so I've been looking into this as well. Seems to me, the first step is to eliminate the porn. Then if the fetishes continue to interfere in a way I do not want, I will seek therapy.

 

I believe that possibility. I can pretty much recall the evolution of the magnitude of my fetishes and make the connections over the last 20 years. You have to remember that they weren't always in control of your happiness, it was a gradual process aided by an artificial stimulus.

 

I also had pre-porn fetishes beginning around age 5 before I understood the sexual arousal I was feeling. I would fantasize about them at school as a means of escapism even before the discovery of porn formed the visually oriented neuropathways in my teenage brain. Masturbation and fantasizing is still a coping mechanism for stress and anxiety that leads to procrastination and then build-up of guilt. I'd like to get that more under control.

The way I have come to understand fetishes themselves is that they are connected to deep and unconscious aspects of the psyche. Oftentimes what we desire in our fetishes speaks of something underneath it that we did not get in childhood or are not getting now. Therein is one of the biggest issues with fantasy is that through porn and other methods we can trick ourselves into getting something that we actually aren't and then can become insatiably addicted to a synthetic version of what we truly want. Some fetishes I think are about integrating feelings or states of consciousness and if they can be used as such the "taboo" and cultural-hype aspect of the fetish fades away naturally. For example; Jung said that crossdressing men are finding their anima (inner feminine personality) in order to integrate it at which point the crossdressing is no longer required. One thing for certain is there is no one size fits all and people can have a variety of reasons for being attracted to one particular fetish alone.

 

Yes - particularly quitting porn. Considering these are fetishes that formed in childhood the world of porn kind of hijacks and runs with what is actually natural phenomenon (despite it being somewhat uncommon). It strips us of it's inherent innocense. Yet trying to "kill" the fetish as I did for many years has a tendency to backfire because it is a part of our makeup for some reason or another. Instead, again, what really needs to be "killed" is the "fetishy" aspect of it: the cultural-taboo and hype that is played upon by porn. I think it is healthy to explore the fetishes we have outside of porn; In a way that honors and respects the innocence of it without making it a "naughty no-no" or "why we're so messed up in the head" which creates guilt and taboo, the ingredients which paradoxically feeds mental obsession. Does that make sense? Can you discern an aspect of your fetish which is innocent vs. a part which is visually/mentally conditioned by porn or culture? Bringing extra sensuality or emotion into sex I don't think is the problem, it's the mental/visual addiction which actually separates us from our body, emotions and senses that is the problem.

 

The trigger comes back full strength and then some when you relapse. It's almost like a car fitting itself into the treads that are already in the dirt road, even if weather has smoothed them out a bit. That tread will always be there, the neural pathway in your brain that knows what causes a reliable dopamine hit. I can honestly say it's ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE for me to MO without my fetish(es.) In the flatline stage tho, it all actually made me ill. Feast or famine, I guess.

Hard mode reboot is the only way I seem to be able to keep from relapsing. I can go without sex easy, but I can't go without PMO if I'm having scattered sex with someone who doesn't care about me. The cycle is for me something like, 1) I have bad sex because there's no emotional connection or I can't O due to mental disconnect (lots of lifelong faking going on since my first abusive relationship, not proud to say, just can't relax) 2) lonely and inadequate feelings deliver me to my fetish 3) My fetish leaves me disconnected the next time I have sex... or even try to flirt/initiate another encounter.

The P is in the way of how I perceive myself and forced P sexuality stands in IRL.

There's a book called Capture that was really good at explaining how thought processes (from addiction to anxiety and more) get you caught in repeating loops. I highly recommend if you get help from teh book learnin. Might read it again just to remind myself I AM NOT A SLAVE TO BRAIN CHEMISTRY