This is really interesting to me, for several reasons.

My fetish developed when I was really young, like elementary school, as did my sneezing fetish, and the rest of my story is kind of similar to yours as well. I'm still in high school, but about five years ago my mother was diagnosed with a mental illness (a strange one that they can't really treat, but that is mostly paranoia and depression and probably not, we hope, paranoid schizophrenic). I've since been told that she exhibited signs of mental illness when I was younger as well, but it was more so depression then, triggered apparently by my father's (alleged - I kinda refuse to believe it) abuse of her, and it was only in the past few years that she began staying in hospitals and taking medication for the paranoia, etc.

Now, my dad's great - he's always there for me as much as he can be - but the fact of the matter is that he cares about me much more than he cares about my mother - they were separated years ago - and there's only so much he can do. Plus, though we've gotten closer in the past year or two, they split up when I was very young, and I've never really lived with him. I don't know him too well.

Anyway. I don't have siblings, and I also have a pretty hard time at school, being bullied or whatever (wow, sorry, I don't mean this post to sound so self-pitying), and so there were/are it plenty of times where I felt very, very alone. I'm an only child, very few of my friends knew what I had to deal with until recently, etc.  So even though the fetish existed before I was consciously aware of my mother's issue, I wonder if they're connected. Because now it occurs to me that there were plenty of times I ran crying to my room and wanted, desperately, someone to comfort me, like in books (and incidentally, before I obsessively read fanfiction where the guy cries, I read fanfiction where the guy comforts the crying girl),  and then somewhere along the line, the focus shifted. I don't know.

Sometimes I wonder how much the fetish plays into all of this though, mainly because I'm really embarrassed about crying in front my parents/seeing them crying. I mean they always comfort me or whatever when actually do see me upset, but most of the time I avoid them seeing it. Like I remember when I was four years old, my parents told me they were getting divorced and I pretended to be happy about it. I wonder if, even then, it made me uncomfortable to be upset in front of them. I can't tell. (he funny thing is, I used to think it was only relatives that made me uncomfortable about crying, but that turns out it's not true. While I'd obviously be happy to comfort them, and lucky me (not really though, they're mostly girls) am known as the 'shoulder to cry on' by virtually all of them, there was one time where I almost started crying in front of them last year, and when they tried to hug me, I RAN. I always thought that being comforted would be something I'd appreciate, but for whatever reason running was my instinctive reaction.

I can never decide if I'd want to be the strong person in a relationship or not. On the one hand, it appeals to me, and I like it when I get to be someone's emotional rock in that way, and I like to be needed, and to be confided in, but at the same time, I kind of like the idea of having a really strong guy to lean on. Plus, if he's strong and/or happy most of the time, then it makes it even more special when he does break down. Incidentally, in the one relationship I've ever had, I never saw him cry - but he did tell me about songs that made him cry, and I debated seriously buying them and playing them for him when he listened to my ipod.

Last edited by PaperThings (May 20, 2012 1:19 am)

First, just wanted to say to TheDreamer and PaperThings how sorry I am to hear about the difficulties you've had to deal with.

I love when people are open on the forum and I'm not shy about sharing, but I didn't answer right away because I don't really have an interesting answer!  I  don't know where my own fetishes came from.  I don't think they had much to do with my upbringing, per se.  I figure exposure to the highly dramatic, exaggerated type of sneezing found in cartoons started my sneeze fetish, but most kids are exposed to the same thing and they don't go on to develop a sneeze fetish.  There is nothing special I can pinpoint about my childhood that relates to sneezing or an interest in witnessing a sudden lack of control in others (although fetishes that are about control in one form or another are relatively common in the fetish world, it seems... perhaps it's just a natural predisposition?)

As for the crying fetish, I was raised with pretty average attitudes towards crying and comforting.  While I preferred to hide my crying from others, I figure that's a pretty normal thing to do.  I felt sufficiently comforted whenever I needed it, so I don't know what could have predisposed me for a crying/comforting fetish (other than some of the physical similarities crying shared with my already established sneeze fetish).  HOWEVER, I do think the reason it has become more of an OBSESSION over the last few years is that my husband does not share that sort of intimacy with me, so I simply crave what I lack.  If I was getting this sort of intimacy on a regular basis, who knows, maybe I wouldn't even be here... I would still have the fetish for sure, but maybe it would be satisfied enough naturally that I wouldn't be driven to get on a forum and discuss it, you know?  Hard to know.  Don't get me wrong, he is emotionally intimate for sure (if not, it wouldn't be much of a marriage!), but he is not the crying type.  He just isn't wired that way.  He thinks crying feels bad and doesn't like it.  Not sure how much is due to upbringing and how much is just him.  I don't know how often the average man cries in a happy relationship, but I know there are men out there who go years and years without crying, so he's not the only one.  There are even chats about this sort of thing found online and both women and men seem to have opinions on when it is appropriate and inappropriate for a man to cry... many people feel that, in a man's case, the crying has to happen for a "socially acceptable" reason to be OK (such as a funeral or birth of a child).  Although others will disagree loudly... obviously there is a divide on this issue in our society!!  Being on this forum, you can imagine which side I take on the issue.

But that is off-topic from this thread!!  Short answer is, my best guess has been that my fetish just comes from the way my brain is wired (a type of  hard wiring present at birth, possibly), but I really don't know.

Wow. Some very personal stuff here - *hugs* for you guys for sharing. I don't know where my fetish came from; my family is very stable, I never had any real issues when growing up, and I was never exposed to unhealthy attitudes about crying. I do know that one early memory I have, when I was probably about four, i of seeing my mum crying on the phone to someone. I don't remember how I felt, but I imagine at that age I would have been scared, and I do think that my fetish is linked to fear - I was uncomfortable with crying for many years, though it fascinated me. I have read that fetishes and phobias are quite closely linked, being similar, so I do wonder if the fact that I have held on to that memory means that it had an impact on me, making me fear and then later be aroused by tears.