Like many healthy adults, I routinely consult a therapist/life coach.
This woman is very attractive. 5’8”. Very fit. Vaguely reminiscent of Cindy Crawford/Ellen Pompeo hybrid. Very pretty.
I’ve been working with her for over a decade. She is 100% aware of all of my sexual quirks and features.
For the first several months we worked together, she always wore closed toe shoes like loafers, or ballet flats, or closed toe pumps. However, one day it was her anniversary and she was meeting her significant other after our session. She was in a red dress, red strappy heels, and red toenails. I am very expressive with my non-verbals and it was apparently obvious that I was flustered by her outfit and exposed feet. We laughed about it and I did my best to maintain my composure as we worked on helping me be better. She even offered to cover her feet with her jean jacket or block them with her purse.
But that opened the flood gate. I had always been curious if she was ticklish. I had previously tried surreptitiously to get her to admit, but, she is a licensed mental health counselor. She recognized what I was trying to do. And she was aware it was in my kink tool kit. So like any professional, she would deflect and redirect the discussion.
More and more sessions would pass and more and more sandals would appear. And mind you, she has pretty feet. I would make more comments jokingly, which she recognizes is part of my personality. And she would say something to the effect of “We can talk about feet as it relates to mental health. We just can’t talk about My Feet.” Still up to this point, she would never admit to her ticklishness. She would just kind of dance around it.
Eventually I confessed via text that I had become obsessed with wondering is she was ticklish on her feet. She replied back that she hadn’t thought it was relevant to my goals and our work. However, she also didn’t want something getting in the way of my goals and our work together.
In the next text she replied “To answer your question, yes I am ticklish. It’s something that I’ve learned to control a little better as I’ve gotten older. I hate being tickled.”
Suddenly, I saw her in a different light. I saw her as more vulnerable. Maybe more nurturing. More approachable. More human and less therapist. This was maybe 3 or 4 years ago.
In subsequent conversations, when I’ve spoken about tickling, she sort of laughed. Every time. It was giving me a complex, like she was laughing at me. Eventually, during a recent session basically devoted sexual proclivities and mental health, I expressed my concerns about her soft giggles whenever I mentioned tickling.
Her response was golden. She said, “I’ve had other people mention my laugh to me. And it’s just something I do when I relate to my clients. So please don’t feel self conscious. It’s just me identifying with what you’re saying. And I AM REALLY TICKLISH.”
So I’ve never seen her get tickled. I didn’t know if she was definitively ticklish for about 6 years.
But at this point, the cats out of the bag. And it’s no longer a distraction to our work like it once was.
If only she knew that I would pay her for ten sessions to give her a full pedicure!