What starts a fetish?

I'm pretty sure my rectal temperature/thermometer fetish started when I was a kid. My mom, as well as the pediatrician, took our temperatures at the drop of a hat. One cough or sneeze, and we knew the thermometer was about to find it's way into our bottoms. The visual of seeing the thermometer poking out from our butts led us to playing Doctor with eachother and then some of our friends. It was all innocent fun and games until the hormones kicked in.

Hospital trip to ER when I was 4. Definitely didn’t like nurses or doctors when I was younger. Having to submit to the nurse holding my legs up in diaper position sticking a thermometer up my butt. Not my best moment but it's what started my fetish. 🍑🌡️

I think I've posted this at another discussion, my 1st fetish are boots......and I remember family and family friends wearing some pretty heeled boots.....and that toc toc toc when they walk.....

and the latex fetish was triggered by Michelle Pfeiffer at Batman Returns ..... meow

Be safe

Za

Not being a supporter of psychoanalyzing and putting a label on every little thing in life, I tend to think my "fetishes" come from my successful exploration of things that are fun, interesting or generate pleasure. Sensation is a key factor for me as well.

Anal came from an exploration in the shower with my fingers when I was 9 or 10. The bondage/sensation stuff followed shortly thereafter. Everything I'm into now progressed naturally through healthy, personal exploration. There was no "defining moment" - no trauma, no episode with an evil aunt/mother/teacher/etc, no spanking by a school nurse in a white uniform - thank you very much Dr. Freud.

Generally speaking, I tend to define my own moral code and values without comparing my choices to the "social norms" as dictated by popular culture, media, popular propaganda, religion or government. To me, it's just obvious: Love others, accept others, don't judge (this is a HARD one) be a caring person, consider others, do no harm, keep an open mind, etc. - all are the driving forces. Living this way it's easy to form one's own thoughts around sexuality and things that are commonly defined as "fetish" by mainstream society. I call this individualism.

I consider many things "perfectly OK" that are commonly defined as "fetish" by others. Wearing rubber/chainmail/fur/sequins is a personal choice, style if you will. Tats and piercings are an expression of individuality - when not symbolic of acknowledged hate groups, etc. Wearing nothing is the same, yeah it shocks people but that is their issue, not the naked person's. Multi-partner sexual relationships and hybrid living situations are fine by me as long as all the humans involved are involved willingly and consensually. Don't even get me started on gender judgement!

I like the sensation of a painful enema - this isn't a fetish in my book - it's just pleasure. I do not like blood play so I don't. I am not into diapers. I like tight/restrictive clothing and some bondage. I like cock and pussy pumping. Etc, etc, etc. EVERY PERSON IS DIFFERENT and each has the right to determine for themselves what is OK for them as long as there is no harm to others. The definition of "harm" becomes a challenge here though... Am I being harmed by seeing your naked tits? Uh, no. Get over your puritanical bullshit.

Some may call these things "fetish" but I tend to think that is just another term some use to judge and label others - to "define them" and put them in a social category. By categorizing things and defining "normal" it helps societies behave and stay calm. Psychologists do it. Religion does it. Snoopy neighbors do it. It's all just government.

I think people come up with childhood links to justify their preferences.

Despite that many kinky activities are getting increasingly wider acceptance, simple fact that one seem something as kinky, means it is deep in their mind perverse, not normal and so on. Hence need to explain such thing to oneself. Blaming on childhood is very handy, especially that support for that can be found in some psychological theories.

As a child I have never been spanked, never had enema, no ER or hospital visits.

I got into BDSM at the age of 25 by a chance and really loved it. What really thrills me is the 'perversion' of kinky acts and how that makes me feel.

Some may call these things "fetish" but I tend to think that is just another term some use to judge and label others - to "define them" and put them in a social category. By categorizing things and defining "normal" it helps societies behave and stay calm. Psychologists do it. Religion does it. Snoopy neighbors do it. It's all just government.

Very well written post.

The sad thing is that judging and labeling the things people like to do sexually, is really coming back into fashion big time nowadays. So many people/groups just love to show and preferably enact into actual legislation, the things they do not approve of.

And it is getting worse by the year.

I have two, enemas and shots in the butt. The shots in the butt is a result of me getting many penicillin shots in the butt as a child. I would get ear or throat infections two or three times every winter and every time I would get one or two penicillin shots in the butt. Many times the doctor would give me one on the first visit and tell my mother to bring me back in three days and then I would get a second shot in the butt. I hated those shots. They hurt and I was shy and didn't like bearing my butt for the doctor and his nurse to see. I didn't like them seeing me in my underwear but bearing my butt was even worse.

Many hears later I started enjoying shots in the butt to the point that I have had visits with enemas nurses who would give me two shots in the butt of sterile water after the enemas. The sterile water stings and I like that. I also like being nude with a lovely lady who is giving me enemas, shots, and a happy ending. I enjoy getting shots in the butt at my doctor's office but those don't hurt. I like the painful ones.

The enema fetish did not come from childhood because I don't remember ever getting an enema as a child. I started enemas about age 50 after getting a series of colonics. The therapist suggested I do enemas and I liked them from the very first one.

Overload of emotions maybe. In my cases it also started in early years.. from just being exposed to weird thing and some fears but in the end I think I created my own. I think my fetish is more like a concept instead of a real thing.. a mix of willingly accepting something with some sexuality sprinkled in the mix.

It causes so much confusion in the teens and even in my 20s but in the end it's sort of like Sexually charged situation -> presented with a taboo option -> agreeing to it -> what follows.

I still don't fully get it. Some things just click and are a massive turn on and some don't do anything, despite falling under the general umbrella of commonly accepted fetish.

For example spanking is a pretty common fetish I think. For me, it doesn't do anything. I even strongly dislike it if it has anything to do with being forced or as punishment but if it follows this pattern, it can can be incredibly arousing. Like it has to have those 2 steps of being optional and me (or in some cases other people) willingly accepting or enjoying it.

Overload of emotions maybe.

Interesting observation.

I've noticed since getting along in years, that I get a sudden uptake in horniness following instances of situations in which I am upset, mad, scared of consequences or other upsets in life. Stress and then its removal works well like that for me. I can have one of those days where I am seething mad (or scared of) at situations I can do nothing much about and then with a resolution of sorts or enough passage of time, the day might end with a sudden onset of sexual arousal, seemingly out of the blue.

Perhaps that is why for some people, sex after having a marital spat or lover's quarrel, can be intense. Or why after attending a funeral people have sex. They do so because it is supposedly (romantically philosophic) life-affirming, but maybe it can indeed be caused by an overload of emotions that then gives way to sexual emotion, to balance things out?

For me it was a medical appointment in later life that provided the trigger.

For me its things that happend in the past. Who you where not happy about or impressed of at the time.

You want to relive those because you can't go back in time

But what started what happened in the past ?.

I wonder where desires c

I think the circumstances that aid in fetish formation are achieving sexual stimulation and or satisfaction with an object or circumstances not normally associated with sexuality.

Wow, that is something I try to figure out almost every day!

Mostly childhood experiences

As a young lad playing with older kids, I witnessed a girl about 1 or 2 years older wet her pants during a game. Something fell on her shoulders and almost knocked her down, startling, perhaps scaring her. Her stream seemed to come from her bottom and made a very forceful arc. I had never seen this happen. The rest of the kids ran away and she ran home still peeing. After some minutes I went to her house to ask if she was alright. She was fine and actually enjoyed it (I had no idea), and let me touch her where she was wet. This one incident started my kink for wetting underwear, mine and hers. At first for long time with her, and later with two aunts and two female cousins. I never had an interest in guys.

It developed into a life-long fetish, the *doorway* to this secretive and shame-filled world was my interest in feet of any shape or size, a non-intrusive intimacy that led to gals admitting to behaviors that would have never come up in *normal* conversations. So, while genetic predisposition may ignite the flame, a real-life positive experience forges the metal.

As Anne said, "we're human."

This is an often discussed question around here, and I don't know if there is any one answer. Diapers: we all wore them; those of us old enough were put in cloth diapers with plastic pants, the younger ones were in disposables. Yet in spite of the fact that EVERYONE here wore diapers for the first few years of their lives, and some maybe longer, not everyone is interested in them, let alone fixated on them. Many people are even repulsed by the idea of toddling around in a wet, dirty or even just a clean diaper. The same goes for many other seemingly common kinks. So where do the needs to wear a diaper, or be given a spanking, or an enema, or like feet come from? Not sure that we will ever know all of the causes.

My advice is to think about your own case (everyone should try to know themselves) and then just try and enjoy.

I was reading on this subject recently. The current thought is fetishes develop early in our lives. Traumatic experiences trigger them. Trauma is a relative thing and doesn't necessarily mean life threatening events although they can be. Something as simple as a new sibling and a mothers shifting her devotion to the new baby can trigger a sense of emotional distress and fear of abandonment in a child. During these times a young child reaches out for something that they can replace the loss with. Like mommies' shoes or the child's diapers. This all subsides around five years of age only to resurface sexually at puberty.

It's pretty well established that even babies have sexual tendencies. So there's this mixed-up mess that a young child tries to resolve the best they can, ending in a non standard form of early sexuality. The emotional attachment to their fetish object gets cross wired into the sexual desires and then, at sexual maturity Presto! you got a fetish!

I've spend most of my life wondering how I became an AD/DL. Now thinking back this explanation at least in my case rings frighteningly correct.

För me its started in early age . The filling of rubber and latex they turned me on. I was about 6 years old back then . I didn't know where it came from . It's seems to me , it's something we are born with..

What starts a Fetish? My fears of course.

Definitely my latrophobia. I cannot go to a Dr. I avoid any kind of physical I may have to have like the plague. Even if I had to go for some reason I have to be in control and will not be coerced into anything that makes me feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, and not in control of my body. I know it’s probably horrible for the medical staff but I cannot let them take control of me for one second. I just can't do it. Of course, the answer to it allegedly is go see a Dr. In all situations I maintain composure, and just navigate around it to my needs politely, no one says you have to be an ass hole about it. For employment physicals I am just none compliant, which is my right it has never effected being hired yet. I have no medical history so any investigation on any topic is moot. I am pretty much retired now anything I do now is freelance so no one has any hold on me to do anything. Medical form filling is just something I will not entertain; I am weary of anyone collecting personal information on me that could be used to my detriment in later on in life. I am in no doubt I will make my 6 score and ten years, but I will not do it pandering to the health industry.

I think this is so impossible to answer generally, it's almost certainly different for so most people. For me there are two things, either of which (or both) could cause my medical fetish.

I had some severe childhood trauma and as such have almost zero memory before age 10-11. I'm told I was in hospital a fair amount as a youngster and had some reasonably serious procedures.. nothing of which I remember though. These are things I've been told.

Moving on to me being around 12 or so, I really fancied a friend of mine.. she was beautiful, blonde, funny... I stupidly thought I was going to one day marry her. Her mother was a nurse and she used to get Latex Gloves from under the sink.. and she'd bring them out and wear them for various tasks while we were out playing. I became absolutely obsessed with her hands in Latex Gloves. I'd do all kinds of imaginative things to get her to touch me while she was wearing gloves... then when she'd take them off, I'd offer to go and put them in the bin for her (among other excuses) - but I'd just slip them in my pocket, then lated I'd take them home and wear them to masturbate and think about her.. dreaming of her touching my penis while wearing them.

My fantasies of her were definitely medical.. to a point, but I wouldn't say full blown medical fetish.

Now of course; I'm into Surgical Fetishism... and enjoy being strapped down, draped by a surgeon and simulation operations being performed on me. It's quite a step forward from enjoying latex gloves. So who knows?!

It's something which really interests me though, I'd love to learn more about why I like what I like.

I'm pondering that a lot of the time. What is it, exactly, that starts it? What is it truly about? What made me this way? For most people wearing an oxygen mask or being put to sleep isn't really a pleasant experience, or at least not one that somebody would like to experience, let alone be sexually aroused by it.

In my experience, my parents watched ER quite a bit when I was little. I did have some fascination with oxygen masks and generally oxygen delivery as a small kid, but it's after I met a girl with an extremely rare, genetic neurodegenerative condition at age 8 that my interest truly got upgraded to a secret obsession. For the first time in my history as a child, I knew, I had before my eyes, something that no child should really experience if they want to stay innocent: knowing that someone your age, as young as 8, can be very sick and die. It's also at this point in my life that I started being obsessed about death and dying, and probably around there that I truly started to become a hypochondriac (because yes, I have some serious health anxiety tendencies, which in a way turned out positive because I know a lot of things about diseases and medical stuff). Probably it traumatized me in some way.

The second and last time I saw her, she was wearing an oxygen mask instead of the nasal cannula she had on the first time. I wondered how it felt like to breathe with one. I was hell into it. I would research them privately, terrified that my parents would find me out. The taboo was there already. It was charged more than another interest. I fantasized about going to the hospital, which I was afraid of because I was afraid my parents would take pictures of me and bring those memories up later, and having the mask put on my face. "Hi'iaka, you're going to have this mask over your face, it's to help you breathe, honey". For many years I've been wanting to acquire a few of them, not just for play, but also... just to hold the thing and study it, in a way. Try to understand what truly attracts me to it. I'd do just like my character Namaka however: I'd keep all of these supplies in an inconspicuous box/chest, or better, something I can lock or otherwise have inaccessible to others. It's something that is mine and only mine, and that is too viscerally close to my core to have anyone in my life truly know about it. It won't happen until I have my own place though. Which could be... in a long time. If ever.

It should be noted that my home environment as a kid was pretty restrictive despite being apparently let loose (few rules, but the limits were non-negotiable and hitting them meant an emotionally violent outcome that was enough to scare me into not going there). Suffocating, in a way, even I was told at a very young age not to trust anyone, learned a lot of the time to shut my emotions or needs down... to hide my interests, my life, to only show a fraction of who I truly am, because the real person wasn't wanted, only the "child" was...

...and what exactly is the purpose of an oxygen mask? Helping a patient breathe, in a medical setting. Give them extra oxygen because either they're not getting enough from the 21% in room air, because they need help waking up from surgery, or because their body is otherwise in need of more for a while.

Maybe for me, it's about having something help me breathe. Survive. Stay alive when I cannot support myself. Literally putting myself on life support. I was a child that had to deal with her emotions, needs, and with her own personality all alone. Lift myself up at an age where you are weak and dependent. And like some have mentioned here, this emotional thing got intertwined with sexual pleasure as I grew older. It's often in times of stress that my fetish seems to flare up dramatically, I note. I also fantasize about giving myself some treatments to relax at home, even though oxygen toxicity would probably be a risk and I could end up dead or with half a mind (who knows, though, if I can't find a way to make it as safe as possible). Just imagine finding me dead half-naked, clearly out of oxygen toxicity rather than carbon dioxide like one would expect to find a dead person in this context, and outing me as a well-compartmentalized medical fetishist who ended up breathing herself to death. Talk about outing myself in the worst way possible. At least I wouldn't be around to be embarrassed, but... the idea is still terrifying, albeit hilarious in the same breath (pun entirely intended).

For anesthesia, I believe it's the curiosity of what it's like to disappear out of consciousness for a while. It came later than the regular oxygen masks, a year or so before puberty truly hit me. The reason why they give you oxygen is because you stop breathing (flirting with death?) once the anesthetics kick in for real and your body needs some reserves to last until it's intubated. But it's less about falling asleep than seeing that mask slightly fog up, especially if your lips are a bit parted, just letting some air pass. That thing looks closed and without the air coming in you'd be suffocating within a minute, but there's oxygen coming in. It's a small space, a tiny space, but it's full of what gives you life. What if in a sense, it's a little refuge? A "breath of fresh air", or a "bulle d'oxygène" (oxygen bubble, literally) like we say here to say a release, an outlet?

My therapist told me I grew up in a cold environment. I told her that my source of warmth was a lighter (metaphorically, of course), and she commented on how that warmth was artificial. It might also come down to that... artificially sustaining my life, because I feel there are moments I might just die on the spot from how overwhelmed I feel having to carry my own (metaphorical) weight (because ironically, I'm on the petite side).

A very interesting perspective @Hi_iaka . Thanks for sharing. As an aside, have you ever tried scuba diving?

@LordJim2 No, I haven't. You wanna know the irony? I'm precisely terrified of running out of air underwater. Or to have the whole thing fail and I end up drowning. But indeed that'd be pretty in line with my fetish... and my deep connection with water, oceans, and islands too. If my fetish extends to that one day I'll always remember that guy on Zity who suggest I try scuba diving lmao

For me, my mask fetish, both the earliest one involving black beauty anesthesia masks and later oxygen masks, and then protective masks (surgical, N95, P100, etc) , which endures strongly today, was definitely connected to a medical trauma or trauma series, but I can see @agracier 's point that it doesn't need to be that way.

I really like @Hi_iaka 's last post, talking about the young girl she actually met who had to wear an oxygen mask in daily life. I never met any "mask girls" in my life until well into adulthood. I was 30, and a 19 year old artist/model I met online and I met in person at a fundraiser concern. She initially wore a lace patterned, off-white cloth mask with earloops, but then changed into a big, matte black cartridge respirator with a black halo strap up top and white prefilter caps on the side canisters. Really pretty, slim brunette young woman. Still somebody I get excited over the memory of.

But while I clearly recall the photo of the young girl in the kids book about surgery my mother bought me way back when, her mouth and nose covered in a shiny black anesthesia mask with black tubes leading to the anesthesia machine, I don't recall the girl that made me pivot mostly to surgical masks and other protective masks. How old was I? How old was she? What did she look like exactly? What kind of mask did she have on---tie-on? cone? earloop? What color? And what exactly was her "masking story?" Why was she required to have it on?

It's fun to think back on all this stuff, because it is indeed lifelong.

Psychiatrists say, the first 5 years of your life, mold your personality, and who you will be for the rest of your life. The first 14 years of your life, if you’re exposed to trauma, is what will send you into therapy, if you care to make positive choices in your life. If you don’t reach out to receive professional help, your choices may not be positive outcomes.

Enemas molded my anal fetish, and my sexuality my whole life. I’m everything about anal sex and male assholes.

Enemas are private, and I haven’t had the guts to share with my D daddy. I’ve never been able to over come the shame.

I’ve been in therapy until about 7 years ago. I’ve excepted my fetish, which brings me an immense amount of pleasure.

There isn’t any shame around my D/s relationship. Just around enemas. Maybe one day I’ll face it head on. As of now, I’m ok.

I dreaded medical visits pre adolescence and then during adolescence and young adulthood because my step mother was present for almost all my exams up to 16 with the female pediatrician she chose. Then at a large college in the late 70s there was a specific nurse assigned to test for STDs each day if you were sexually active. The first time I had a genital probe stuck in me it was painful but oddly stimulating. I kept following up with the same nurse for tests when I needed them which I found to be very stimulating and then I started to like everything about examinations by doctors.