Aunt and cousin used to tickle me in my early adulthood, feel weird about it still

I am male and this is not a "tickling story" because I didn't want to showcase it for the purposes of entertainment but rather through the lens of coping with something that left me a little frazzled. if you do happen to enjoy this story that's fine but I just wanted to be clear that this is a sensitive story for me and a result I opted not to put it into True Tickling Stories because I wanted to discuss the implications of what happened. the tl;dr is that I'm a man with a tickling fetish who was tickled on two separate occasions by biological female family members (all 18+). I was drunk when I let it happen both times and I feel very confused even though I'm almost in my 30s. Here's the story

when I was 20 I lived with my aunt I only met a couple years prior, and she lived alone with a single daughter who was my older cousin but who never much talked to me and wasn't very social so it didn't feel much like family. due to some hard times I had to leave the area I grew up in and the only family I knew of were them. I'll call my aunt Charlotte and my cousin Carly. they had a spare bedroom that I stayed in for the better part of nine months. this was in late 2012 to middle 2013.

being that we didn't grow up around each other, it was a little odd of a dynamic at first. started overly formal, felt like i was a guest in their home rather than family, but slowly it got to a point where I got comfortable enough to let my guard down. Carly was pretty quiet and antisocial and oftentimes wasn't home at all or was behind closed doors in her bedroom or in this walk-in closet that she and her mom shared. Aunt Charlotte worked at the DMV on M-F from like 7AM to 6PM with the drive. as a result I had a lot of time to myself in the daytime while I did freelance commission work to help pay for my food and accommodations.

the one thing that Carly and Charlotte had in common was that they both liked to drink. I learned pretty quickly into living there that Aunt Charlotte was one of those "party moms" who sees herself as more of a friend to her daughter, but since Carly was like 23 I figured it didn't matter as much. But they would both drink and party hard. I don't much like alcohol since i feel sick not long after getting drunk so I would often decline. But one night I decided to go ahead and drink with them, where normally I would retire for the evening and I'd just hear them through the walls.

This was probably January or February 2013 that this incident first occurred because I remember it was freezing and as a result I was wearing these giant wool socks I got. They worked really well but the problem was that the hem of the sock where it clung to your ankles was so tightly pressed and itchy that i kept reaching down to itch my ankles under the sockline. I had taken up Aunt Charlotte and Carly on a nightcap so I had a brandy, which was making me feel even warmer inside, so the itching on the ankles got worse and I kept itching. Charlotte and Carly were already like three drinks in while I was on my first one so they were both loud and happy drunks. I felt a buzz from how little tolerance I had.

Carly says something to me like "why don't you just take those off??" and tries to tug one of the socks down my ankle a little. I laugh a little and admittedly feel weird as this is the first time Carly's ever even touched me. She didn't hug me hello when I first moved there and hadn't ever tried to be funny or silly so it was surprising. As she realizes the ankle hem is pretty thick and hard to get down, she decides to reach for the fabric at the very front of the toe of my sock. She grabs my toes in the process and completely unexpectedly let out the familiar "I just got tickled unexpectedly" yelp.

Full stop, I have a tickling fetish. Always have. At that point in my life I was a virgin and had only dated a little bit and hadn't opened up about tickling. I was very closeted in my mind about this but I knew deep down how much I liked it. So right away I feel my face flush at the realization that I just got a quick tickle from my cousin of all people. As soon as I make the noise she starts doing the same motion to my other foot, grabbing at the tips of my toes both to tickle them but also trying to grip the socks so she can pull them off. Charlotte is just watching all of this, I'm unsure of what to do and feeling so confused but also loving this weirdly playful moment between me and an older cousin, and without really any warning suddenly she says "we should tickle you."

It sounds so fake. It sounds unreal even to type it. It's the kind of thing I wanted a girlfriend or a crush or even a teacher or something to say to me one day, but this woman who is my aunt who looks vaguely like my mother and who has mannerisms of my family just said this to me. I am still giggling from what Carly keeps doing to me, but then once Charlotte said that Carly seemed to take it as a cue to start poking and grasping around at my sides and torso. As I explode into laughter my aunt takes that as some kind of cues to start tickling my feet where Carly had just been. This entire ticklish onslaught must have gone on for only 2-3 minutes but it felt like forever.

at the end I'm laughing and they're laughing and I'm still trying to process what the fuck just happened. I know better than to let myself get hard somehow so thank god for that but they both did something to me that left me feeling aroused and therefore confused. Aunt Charlotte point blank asks me, "what do you think of what we just did?" and I say pretty quickly "it was fun". Aunt Charlotte says "think you wanna drink with us a little more often now, hmm?" and she teased me, poked my side and got one more confused laugh out of me, and then up they both were. we went the rest of the night without another incident like that.

Three months later it is April and we are drinking again and Aunt Charlotte brings up last time. "Wanna do that again?" I haven't stopped thinking about it for the three months. I had started dating a girl in March named Maria and I ended up losing my virginity to her. But one of the things I remembered doing to help "keep myself in the mood" that night I lost my virginity to Maria, and to keep myself from getting anxious, was thinking about how it felt to be tickled for those two or three minutes. I had used that memory to get myself up on almost all occasions to fuck my new girlfriend basically. It was weird and I didn't even realize my mind was going there, until this incident occurred where I'm asking if I want it to happen again.

Long story short, Aunt Charlotte and Carly end up tickling me again, this time for a good five or six minutes... but I get hard. And they see. And I didn't realize they saw until the tickling abruptly stopped and the vibe changed, and Carly went to bed and the next day Aunt Charlotte asked me to find a new place to live.

So, I've never told this to anybody before because I don't think anyone would get it. It was confusing and to this day I get aroused at the memory of what happened yet confused by the shame of basically getting kicked out for getting aroused to where they saw it. I don't know why they were offering me tickling like that if there wasn't some weird slightly sexual connotation, but I felt pretty awful about it and I don't talk to anybody in that side of the family anymore.

there's the story. glad to have it said at least

It can be difficult, but the important thing is to stop feeling guilty for a misunderstanding over which you had no control.

Thanks for sharing, tickconf. That was very well-written and explained. It was an awkward experience that must have been uncomfortable to go through, but life brings those sometimes. I must second that you did absolutely nothing wrong.

This really just highlights how vanilla people can have absolutely NO sexual notions about tickling. They just think it's cute or fun (or maybe unpleasant). As a result, they can be shocked at the notion of arousal from it. If the realization context makes arousal seem inappropriate, such as being with family, they may react negatively and blame us. But that is simply unfair. No one can help being wired the way they are.

I get that you feel weird; people's reactions have made me and many others here feel bad about ourselves because of the fetish too. But you are not weird! Everyone has differences, just many hide them. Try to let time help you get over it. That was just an unfortunate misunderstanding, like Studious_Hustler said.

Hi tickconf, I just want to add that I think your aunt is horrible.

It was 100% her idea to tickle you. So there is zero blame on you for getting a hard-on. For her to tell you to leave shortly after that is awful on multiple levels. If she were a not-horrible adult, she would have just refrained from tickling you again. You have nothing to be ashamed of. If it were me, I'd never speak to her again - after I told her off.

What does your Aunt expect, that you would not aroused ? Too bad you didn't tickle the hell out of them? Are they ticklish? Your Aunt sounds despicable! Jack

Sorry to hear this. It’s not your fault that this happened, as you didn’t instigate either incident and didn’t actively seek it out. It was probably confusing for your aunt and cousin to see you aroused, in their defence, but they wouldn’t have known about your fetish. As such, you’re likely to get excited just due to the sensation, more than the people tickling you. However, to kick you out the day after is pretty mean, there’s no two ways about it. As I say, you didn’t instigate anything, so can’t be blamed for what happened.

Cheers, everybody,
SmashTV

I don't normally reply like this directly to others. But Jack, the poor is here pouring his heart out on his confused feelings and actions taken by his family and you would actually ask if his aunt is ticklish and he tickled them back? Read the room man. Not cool.

Someshadowthing I didn't mean to sound insensitive honestly, I apologize and I feel for you.

Sexuality is confusing for everyone at some point in their lives. I think you just need to take two lessons from this experience and then move on/forgive yourself:

1) You know this is a large turn on for you so take yourself out of similar situations with family if it happens again.

2] Find a partner that will enjoy tickling with you. At the core of it this is what you want, you’re just a parched man in a tickling desert. Thinking about a highly sexual experience to stay erect during sex is normal, especially if you’re nervous. You just need a consensual partner to bring tickling into your life in the intimate way you need and leave the past in the past.

I've been some situations with similarities to this, so I'm curious about a few things.

First, I have a kind of technical question about them having seen your hard on. Do you remember if you were wearing sweat pants? Workout/running shorts? Underwear? I'm curious because usually in something like jeans or normal guy's pants, a hard on is held in enough so as to not be obvious. Could it have been some other reason they stopped?

And... when she told you to find a new place to live, did you ask her why?

Finally, have you ever seen either of them since, and if so, what's the tone of that? Are they friendly?

There's nothing wrong with tickling among family members -- I had cousins who went through a brief but intensive phase of tickling me, and one of my aunts tickled me a few times. But their apparent response to your erection was bizarre and uncharitable and reflected a naive view of the complexities of human physiology. (Tumescence is fickle and unpredictable and not infrequently a response to being tickled even among people who don't enjoy anything about tickling. And even genuine arousal is complicated and involuntary and not, in this case, indicative of any ill intent on your part.) With your banishment I'd say they revealed themselves to be unkind people. Which isn't something one wants to discover about one's family, and I'm sorry to hear it. But you should definitely cut yourself slack; you didn't do anything wrong there.

brotherted said:

Could it have been some other reason they stopped?

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This. And even if it was the erection that triggered it, it doesn't even mean THEY think it was all your fault. Maybe it made the aunt second-guess what she and her daughter were doing, and she totally freaked out. Then she was too embarrassed to talk to you about it or live with you any more. Or maybe it made her think you were attracted to her daughter and that freaked her out ("Oh my god...I started something sexual here. I've got to stop this right now."). It's not unheard of for someone to regret drunken behavior the next morning and want to just wish it away. I'm NOT excusing her behavior or anything--she clearly didn't handle it well. Just saying there's another way to look at it than thinking you did something wrong or crossed a boundary.