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did finding the TMF make you feel less alone?

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WildLaughter

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Sep 4, 2014
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I'm curious how people felt after finding there was a tickling community.
Did places like the TMF help you deal with your interest in tickling easier?
 
It definitely did. It was great finding out I wasn't the only tickle fetishist around. I just wish there were more Lees near me,female ones that is.
 
My fascination with all aspects of sexuality – and the nature of our existence – felt so natural to me that I supposed I shared it with everyone in the same way I shared any typical human experience. So if anything, I think I was surprised to learn that fewer people seemed to appreciate, or at least show curiosity about, particular interests.
 
It is not the TMF itself which brought me the most joy. It's when I discovered that I wasn't the only one in the world to have that fetish. To find sexualized depiction of the fantasies I had in me since childhood. It happened with the discovery of Saudelli's Double Cross' tickling scene when I was 15, on a now defunct site called Arkham. It was pretty cool by the way.

Another thing that brought me immense hope was finding out that there was a market for our kink. My reasoning was thus: if companies like MTP or Realtickling were able to make money, then it meant that not only I wasn't the only one but also that we were many more of us than I thought. A find which was amply confirmed by the TMF's extensive members list.

What the TMF really brought me though was a motivation to speak/write better English, so as to better make friends here. My passion for English definitely was nurtured here, and I have now reached such a level of fluency that I could say I owe part of my career's success to the forum. You guys have no idea what it means to us non native speakers to have found a platform where we can observe you conversing so naturally, unconstrained by the laws of social conventions and evoking subjects which range all the way from our sexuality down to Tony Blair's reelection so freely.

Oh and some friends. There are some people here I hold very dear :bubbleheart:
 
It was actually the alt.sex groups back on Usenet that showed me that I was not alone. :D
 
100%! When I first discovered the TMF, it really opened my eyes and made me see that I wasn't the only one who loved all things tickling! That was enormously helpful :)
 
I have to agree with some of the others. It wasn't a forum that made me aware that I wasn't alone in the fetish. It was studying sexual psychology and reading books on the different kind of kinks that there were out there. I remember one book that I read parts of in a book store (I forgot the title) that made mention of women's feet, orgasms and soles and proposing that "...a woman who is that way minded." can have an orgasm from having her feet tickled. I was like 21 at the time and totally stunned by what I had just read. I thought about it all the way home in the car and realized several things such as there are a great many more of us out there and not just ticklers but, women who enjoy being tickled. I had such a feeling of relief and amazement at the same time. It felt like I was in a dream or something. Was this really happening? It was like that then, later I found out about the internet, started doing searches and hanging out in chat rooms and gradually I began finding the different websites and some years after that, found out about the two forums and so on and eventually came here.
I miss the early days of the internet. It was a simpler and more peaceful time but, that's beside the point. So, anyway, that's how it was for me.
 
Absolutely. I’m a pretty quiet and reserved person and no one in my life knows about this fetish I have. When I made an account on the TMF I was able to interact with people who felt the same way as me about tickling. And now I feel more comfortable with it myself too.
 
The TMF members to me are kind of like a family to me. But, I am always aware that it is a freaky family. I love and adore my family but always realize that I /we are still not part of the norm. Excluding with my sexy wife, until I can have a conversation with others that doesn't lead to odd looks I still feel I am basically alone.
 
Driving through the midwest in 1985 and seeing Cal Star's Tied and Tickled #1 on the shelves at some adult bookstore off the highway.Blew my mind. Only a few months before I had seen my first copy of Leg Show. Found out that finding feet and tickling arousing were something that I was not alone in was truly amazing.

Exploring all the outlooks of other people (and media produced) regarding these topics on the TMF have been fantastic these past (almost 18) years.
 
As I recall, I first found Tickle Theater, followed by TMF, as well as the existence of the Tied & Tickled magazines about the same time. It was good to find there were others with similar interests. Not that I've been able to physically pursue such interests (as with many here).
 
This is an excellent question/discussion.

It definitely help me out, I have a place to go and discuss my foot fetish and tickling fetish with other people and not feel like I'm the only person out there in the world. It's nice to know that a lot of people have the same fetishes as I do.

I can share website ideas and clip store ideas with other people who may or may not disagree with me, but at least we can talk about to tickling and foot fetish.

Thank you,
LBFT
 
WildLaughter said:
I'm curious how people felt after finding there was a tickling community.
Did places like the TMF help you deal with your interest in tickling easier?
Click to expand...

I've shifted around in my perspective a lot, so here goes.

I feel like people in the community are socialites or they're here for the videos/pictures/knowing they aren't the only people with the fetish. It floats around 50/50 as far as I can see.

In terms of normalization and knowing there's people out there like me (on the web or knowing there's people from the same state I'm from)? Yea, I guess.

I've always been guarded knowing that I like tickling and that it's kind of the good center of my interpersonal interests. I'm still trying to work myself away from being closed up during casual day-to-day BS vs trying online dating shenanigans. I really have to sort of try and clear my palette to put myself in situations that anxiety in relation to this won't impact myself/others.

That being said, I think the determining factor in "feeling less alone" or "fulfilled" from a website comes down to whether or not you have an offline life that's rewarding on a regular basis (vs the occasional thrill). Sites like TMF/Fetlife are really sites that I think were assembled as places that assumed members had a "life on the outside" sort of as prerequisite to being discovered on the net. But like any community there's those that dream and those that live the dream and one group populates these places more than the other.
 
Like Lacombe said to Neary at the end of "Close Encounters" as Neary was about to board the mothership, "Mr. Neary, I envy you," so do I envy millennial tickle fetishists today, as they were born into a world in which they could log on to our community at any time. I came of age in the '70s and '80s, and there was nothing until I entered college and found the book "Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe" by William Rossi in the library, circa 1989. Someone else kept checking it out for months at a time, so I justified heisting it on that basis, as no one really could access it anyway. Then I started poring through porn-video guides and found titles "Tickled Pink" and "Tickled Pink 2." So I knew there must be a market somewhere. Then came the net, and the alt.sex groups someone mentioned, then the web brought video, and AOL's Tickling room brought chat into the picture. However, TMF smashed down the door in 2002 when it debuted. Then I truly knew I wasn't alone.
 
yes, finding video produces and realizing that meant they had customers. and finding tmf were the two biggest factors in me coming to accept that I was not the only one like me.
 
I don't think I ever really felt alone in terms of having this fetish... I'd always felt very positive about it and knew there was something about tickling that I liked from a very young age, but wasn't necessarily bothered if it was an interest I shared with others or not... I never felt any guilt or concern about having the fetish, in some ways I liked the idea that this was something that only I knew about - nobody else I knew had discovered how amazing tickling was... so when I discovered TMF (through the usual search engine channels, Ask Jeeves in those days!) I didn't feel any relief or have any moment where it made sense suddenly, it was more akin to the kind of excitement I felt as a kid when walking into a vintage car museum or the Pizza Hut, suddenly my world was full of something that I was really keen on!

What finding the TMF DID do though was basically introduce me to sexual stuff. I'd only ever really felt romantic attraction and affection before that. I'd no interest in porn and not really much of an idea why my penis would grow if I was exposed to tickling (or indeed feet/shoeplay)!

However, I certainly think that without the TMF I'd have experienced a sense of being alone later in my life (ie during my late teens/early twenties) because I'd have really struggled to separate tickling from sex and to manage the urge to tickle alongside other aspects of forming an intimate relationship with someone. I wouldn't have known where to look for help in understanding the fetish as I'd have had nobody else to identify with or to bounce ideas/thoughts/experiences off.

Cheers
TTG
 
teamtickleguy said:
I don't think I ever really felt alone in terms of having this fetish... I'd always felt very positive about it and knew there was something about tickling that I liked from a very young age, but wasn't necessarily bothered if it was an interest I shared with others or not... I never felt any guilt or concern about having the fetish, in some ways I liked the idea that this was something that only I knew about - nobody else I knew had discovered how amazing tickling was... so when I discovered TMF (through the usual search engine channels, Ask Jeeves in those days!) I didn't feel any relief or have any moment where it made sense suddenly, it was more akin to the kind of excitement I felt as a kid when walking into a vintage car museum or the Pizza Hut, suddenly my world was full of something that I was really keen on!

What finding the TMF DID do though was basically introduce me to sexual stuff. I'd only ever really felt romantic attraction and affection before that. I'd no interest in porn and not really much of an idea why my penis would grow if I was exposed to tickling (or indeed feet/shoeplay)!

However, I certainly think that without the TMF I'd have experienced a sense of being alone later in my life (ie during my late teens/early twenties) because I'd have really struggled to separate tickling from sex and to manage the urge to tickle alongside other aspects of forming an intimate relationship with someone. I wouldn't have known where to look for help in understanding the fetish as I'd have had nobody else to identify with or to bounce ideas/thoughts/experiences off.

Cheers
TTG
Click to expand...

Great response. I've never met nor heard of anyone feeling this way about it from the start. It seems to me that most of us grow up feeling afraid of what will happen if people find out about it and feeling like we have to hide our art work, stories, magazines and stuff for fear of being judged by family and friends. I did my best to hide everything that I had collected but, some people found out anyway and treated me like I had some kind of a problem. I remember a traumatic experience where my bedroom was opened up by force and my stuff exposed and made fun of. It was humiliating to say the least. These are the kind of things that lots of fetishists and kinksters have to put up with from nosey, judgemental types at least until they become adults and stand up to their bullies. That's why when we discover that we aren't alone in this we feel relieved and some have even said that they cried when they found out just as some say that they've has similar feelings when they went to their first gathering. Ya know the funny part is that some of the stuff that a lot of us are into here isn't exactly uncommon at least as a fetish anyway. Just think how much worse it must be for people with uncommon fetishes and kinks. I'll bet that it's a lot harder for them. Something to think about.
 
It did help me feel less alone initially, but now I feel like people like me are very rare and sparse. I've still yet to come across another fetishist like others have said they have, here or in real life, that I have the chance to connect with. I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer but this site has increased my doubts of finding a partner who likes to tickle guys. I know this is not a dating site, I haven't tried to use it as such, but I have noticed that there aren't many female 'lers out there in general, and the few that are out there aren't single, are uninterested in meeting anyone, or too far away from wherever I'm located. Plus, I want to be in an open or poly type relationship and that just makes dating it even harder. People on Fetlife are more willing to meet, and it has opened me up to more types of play and submission, but I still haven't met any other tickle-fanatics.

Anyway moving on from the dating mini-rant, this site is a really nice place and I'm grateful it exists so I can hang and talk with people like me, but the rarity of people meeting offline and lack of female 'lers is discouraging. I still hope one day I'll get lucky find other fetishists in person by accident, but right now I feel like a rare commodity as guy who likes being tickled.
 
Laughthirsty Lr said:
Great response. I've never met nor heard of anyone feeling this way about it from the start. It seems to me that most of us grow up feeling afraid of what will happen if people find out about it and feeling like we have to hide our art work, stories, magazines and stuff for fear of being judged by family and friends. I did my best to hide everything that I had collected but, some people found out anyway and treated me like I had some kind of a problem. I remember a traumatic experience where my bedroom was opened up by force and my stuff exposed and made fun of. It was humiliating to say the least. These are the kind of things that lots of fetishists and kinksters have to put up with from nosey, judgemental types at least until they become adults and stand up to their bullies. That's why when we discover that we aren't alone in this we feel relieved and some have even said that they cried when they found out just as some say that they've has similar feelings when they went to their first gathering. Ya know the funny part is that some of the stuff that a lot of us are into here isn't exactly uncommon at least as a fetish anyway. Just think how much worse it must be for people with uncommon fetishes and kinks. I'll bet that it's a lot harder for them. Something to think about.
Click to expand...

I was very surprised when I started to explore this site and found out that so many people were apparently in great sorrow or anxiety because of their fetish.

It is quite the opposite for me. As far as I can remember, tickling has always been something more of a safe heaven rather than something I worried about. Sancta Terra. My happy place of sorts, where I retreat to when I wanna feel good. Since no one around me seemed to have this fantasy anyway, it sort of had become "my thing" over the years. It brings me immense pleasure just to think about it and makes me feel relaxed.

I have never been particularly ashamed of it, but then again I don't feel the need to talk about it because I don't believe flaunting my sexuality in people's faces makes for proper conversation; I mean outside of here, naturally :D. This topic is reserved for the few among my friends with whom I discuss this kind of stuff, as well as my wife.

There are judgmental people everywhere. But I don't pay much attention to them anyway. I was outed twice as a sadist (but oddly enough never as a tickler, despite this being my main fantasy; I guess it does not show as much), once in high school and another time in university. The only thing it did was to keep away the people that I already disliked and bring my friends closer. Same thing happened to a gay friend of mine when he was accidentally outed during a party. In the end, it became the same thing as when Tarantino came out about his foot fetish: nothing happened ;)
 
Absolutely. Finding this site was great for me personally. Really helped my self esteem, because for a while I genuinely did think something was wrong with me. I was shocked to see that not only are there are dozens of people who share the same fetish, it's actually normal for people to have their own little things.
 
I felt better turning of age in NYC, and finding adult bookstores that had magazines showing my like of bondage and tickling. Guess I am showing my age, but these forums are the new generation. I'm glad to be part of this community. It's good that people can know and understand they are not alone.
 
It rather makes me feel more among the most positive and cheerful community. Tickling is the best thing :)
 
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