To this day, the top problem I see in my practice is that people living with a fetish are convinced that despite having functional lives and stability, secretly they are freaks. They ask to be “cured” and struggle with their desires. The incredible weight of shame that they carry can take months or years to heal. And some people can never overcome the sinking feeling that what they see as their abnormality makes them unlovable, disgusting, and pathetic to others.
Shame devours their lives. They hide their authentic sexual desires for fear of becoming social outcasts or worse. These fears are understandable. Much of the world sticks to a 19th-century point of view on sex, in no small part because they never had a comprehensive sex education. Politicians and religious leaders alike weaponize sex and gender. Controlling people’s sexuality is a powerful way to control their minds.
Fetishes are a normal variation in human sexual development. So what’s the problem? The problem with fetishes is that we are still burdened by 140 years of ignorance about them! That ignorance has cast so dark a shadow over people with fetishes that most societies continue to believe they are abnormal. And fetishists and kinky people still suffer under the shadow.
Let’s unpack some of the roots of this shame, and how people just like us can overcome it.
The Briefest History of Sexual Shaming
Perhaps it starts in the Bible, where Adam and Eve are punished for eating a forbidden fruit by becoming ashamed of their nakedness. Or maybe it was the pre-Christian ideas of Greek philosophers that too much passion was a bad thing, and too much sex weakened your mind.
There are endless texts from the ancients, pretty much throughout the world, that issue warnings of the perils of acting on sexual desires that were not intended to produce babies. Needless to say, that didn’t stop people from enjoying sex for pleasure!
Sex Shaming in “The Age of Reason”
It wasn’t until the study of sex began in the late 1800s, that a new and more powerful anti-sex narrative formed. The doctors of that era — specifically people like Freud and Krafft-Ebing — reformulated the religious ideology of their times. Instead of labeling people with non-conforming sexual desires “sinners,” they called them neurotics and psychopaths. From their Judeo-Christian points of view, the only “normal” sex was reproductive. Everything else, from masturbation to homosexuality and paraphilias, was labeled abnormal. Their theories went unquestioned until Kinsey, who took the first evidence-based approach to the study of human sexuality, concluded that masturbation, oral sex, gay sex, bisexuality, and sadomasochism, were fairly common, showing up in roughly 10% to 50% of people studied.
Yet people still believe in those absurdly outdated theories from the 19th century. And, while scientists in the 21st century have largely rejected them as hogwash, they persist. Religious leaders continue to equate sexual variations with sin. Everyday people, even the best-educated ones, still see sexual variations as perverse, if not downright psychopathic. They don’t accept that sex and gender diversity are the result of genetic variations throughout the global population. From homosexuality to BDSM, the current scientific consensus, however, is that there are likely genetic markers that make a large percentage of humans pursue sex purely for pleasure. And since pleasure takes as many different forms as the human imagination allows (which is to say VAST), variations in turn-ons are the norm.
It Isn’t the Fetish, It’s the Shame
As scientific research (from biology to psychiatry) has progressed far beyond the quaint theories held up as fact since the late 1880s, we have a more accurate view of human sexuality in 2024.
Genetics and Fetish
We know that genetics plays a role in our likes and dislikes, sexual preferences, and gender orientations. We also know that nurture and childhood experience influence our emotional responses as adults; and that, in the normal course of human life, each of us develops unique sexual responses to sex acts and erotic triggers.
Genomic research shows thousands of genetic factors determine what kinds of foods people prefer. We haven’t unraveled the number of sex markers yet but you can be sure there are likely as many or more than the markers that influence our preferences for ice cream flavors. Imagine if, as a pistachio ice cream lover, people deemed you to be depraved and you had to eat it secretly, behind closed doors, to avoid getting fired at work.
That’s how we treat sex. We approve of sex that may produce babies. Sex for pleasure not so much. And, if fetish gear, footwear, or bondage give you sexual pleasure, you’re marginalized and ostracized.
People Keep Pursuing Fetish Pleasure
We have abundant evidence that, regardless of cultural forces and religious beliefs, people across the world are united in their common thirst for new and different types of sex. We know that no matter how strictly a culture may enforce anti-sex laws, it is impossible to eradicate sexual variations. That’s because fetishes, kink, poly, same-sex relationships, et al, are simply part of the human experience. Criminalize them and they come out of hiding and flourish again when the suppression ends. They never vanish.
Even today, people risk their lives to live out their sex or gender in authentic ways. In other words, they thirst for happiness, and pursue it to the best of their abilities, regardless of what authorities say.
What’s the social impact of trying to dictate sex/gender conformity? SHAME. Horrible, self-negating, shame.
The Shame Trap
My client Weston came to me asking to be cured of his foot fetish. He couldn’t stop thinking about it but avoided acting on it. He was worried because he caught himself staring at women’s feet on the street. And he was certain that someone would notice and publicly humiliate him or scream “pervert” at him, and call the cops. He couldn’t live if that happened.
For better or worse, there is no cure for people living with a fetish. It isn’t a disease, a personal choice, or a mental illness. It’s how one is genetically coded.
Weston remembered being interested and excited by feet and women’s shoes from an early age, as young as three, when he first began playing with his mother’s shoes as if they were toys and organizing them into piles of “good” and “bad.” It was completely innocent and asexual at that age. It was only when he reached his teen years and began to masturbate that he realized fantasies about women’s feet and specific shoe types were the chief themes in his mind. By that age, it would be obvious to a sexologist that he had a fetish and that it likely would never go away.
Weston was disappointed that there was no cure. On the other hand, he was also somewhat relieved because nothing made him feel more alive than abandoning himself to his fetish desires.
Shame Triggers Compulsions
So the biggest problem with living with a fetish is that it can cause shame for those who have fetishes. I’ve been there. I never told a soul about my fetishes until I admitted to myself that I was kinky at age 28. Then the proverbial floodgates opened, and I started experimenting with them. Before too long, I was able to share them with other BDSMers and act on them freely. The positive feedback I got from partners was exactly what I needed to overcome my shame about all the things I loved — feet, boots, furry chests, leather, bondage, ageplay, and more.
What happens to people who never find healthy outlets with like-minded sex partners? Nothing good!
Shame kept Weston closeted. Yet his soul yearned for real-life action. He compensated by watching hours of porn every day. They were good fantasy food for masturbation, but they didn’t fully satisfy him. If anything, it made him hungrier. He would slyly glance at women’s feet wherever he went but that only left him even more frustrated. Now he was scared that he was losing control: he couldn’t stop staring, and it was becoming more difficult to suppress his impulse to reach out and touch a stranger’s sexy shoes.
Moving from fantasy to porn to acting on it nonconsensually spooked him. As well it should. That moment when you feel you may lose control and do something anti-social usually has after-effects even when you don’t act on your compulsion.
It leaves you frightened and profoundly ashamed. You wonder whether you are going crazy or already are crazy. You become compulsive: you can’t stop feeding your hunger. Where will it end??
Compulsions Trigger Bad Choices
Sexual compulsions, regardless of their nature, often lead to making bad choices. They lead to even more shame because you see yourself as a loser or criminal. Weston beat himself up day and night over his fetish. He hated himself for being unable to satisfy his needs. He hated himself for needing it in the first place.
Weston’s personal life was a chaos of bad choices. He repeatedly dated non-kinky women who didn’t accept his fetish. His wife divorced him over his fetish, threatening to tell his children and his parents if he didn’t agree to let her have full custody of their kids. When he tried to explain his fetish to women he dated, they either bolted immediately or stuck around long enough to make him feel like a loser for having one. He quit dating altogether rather than risk the romantic hell he’d gone through.
Bad Choices Trigger Shame
The problem with bad choices is that they reinforce shame. Weston told me that with each new failure, his self-esteem went down. He started keeping his fetish a secret from potential partners. But, inevitably, at some point in the relationship, he realized he had to tell them. He found it difficult to get fully aroused by the straight sex they had. Yet he was terrified of opening up to them and being rejected again.
All his worst fears were re-affirmed by his bad choices. He only dated sexually conformative women and trapped himself in a cycle of hiding his needs, then painfully explaining them, and then being told he was sick and needed therapy. He went on porn binges every time, which led him to feel even worse about himself and his prospects for a loving relationship.
Round and round he went, sinking ever deeper into shame.
Good Choices Rebuild Self-Esteem
There is no “cure” for fetishism. As I’ve often written, you don’t pick your fetish — your fetish picks you. Usually, it picks you at so early an age that it is permanently engrained in your sexual identity. Aversion therapy is a hoax. It doesn’t work. No amount of medications can fix the problem either.
The only path is to learn to live with who you are and, if you’re strong enough, to love yourself AS YOU ARE. That means accepting that your sexuality is as valid as a non-kinky person’s; that there is no sin or psychopathy attached to being genetically different from the people next door; and that your individual preferences are as much a part of your psyche as other variations, like what colors, foods, or smells you enjoy.
How to Enjoying Living With a Fetish
Healing — as Weston and hundreds of other clients who worked with me can attest — is about making safe, sane, consensual choices for yourself. Good choices with good results are the best medicine.
That might mean joining the BDSM community or a peer support group for your particular fetish. Being able to talk to other people who accept you and find commonality between you is a first step. Not dating prudes is another.
I encourage my clients not to wait three months to reveal their fetish to an unprepared partner. Instead, it’s better to let them know before you go on that first date by creating a dating profile that either hints at or openly states that you are looking for a fetish-friendly partner. I have a highly successful protocol to help fetishists take those steps. We start by changing the internal narrative. They aren’t freaks. They are humans with legitimate needs that others don’t understand.
Weston is doing a lot better today. He has a girlfriend who enjoys foot massages and who seems open to exploring his fantasies more deeply. She does not think any less of him for his needs. He told me she’d described him as creative and adventurous in bed. He’s learned to be a better partner too. His girlfriend never has to worry about him cheating on her. He barely watches porn anymore. His fear of acting on impulse with strangers vanished when he made his girlfriend’s feet the object of all his passions.
Fetish is not the problem. Shame about your fetish is the problem. Heal the shame, find healthy, moral outlets for your needs, live your fetish, and love yourself as you are.
Photo credit: Markus Winkler @ Pexels.com