Well, my experience is a little different.
Been a 'ler for 52 years. Until I found TMF a couple months ago, had only met 2 women who knew they liked getting tickled before they met me.
Altogether, counting the babysitters I tickled when I was five, over 100 differentr ladies over the past 52 years have granted me the priviledge of tickling them. I have never tickled anyone for more than a second or so without securing consent first.
There were many women I could never persuade; I gave up and stopped trying to change their minds, and we mostly stayed friends.
With those I did persuade to try it once, there was never any trouble getting them to try a second experience. By the third or fourth time, they were usually the one who mentioned the subject and asked for it.
One thing should be made very clear; with all except a very very few, we were lovers before the subject of tickling was ever mentioned. With all except those I tickled prior to reaching puberty, sex was a part of the experience, and this was known, discussed and agreed to in advance.
I believe that there are four keys to my sucess in converting the reluctant into willing 'lees.
1-My touch is always light and gentle. If they struggle in a non bondage situation, I let them feel the strength in my limbs and hands, but never in a way that bruises or hurts. I never dig in. I cut all my nails, finger and toe, as short as I can without drawing blood, and then file away any corners or edges that might scratch. If bondage is used it is always wide cuffs of soft leather with padding on the inner surface. Even if harder tickling is requested, and it has been, I will not dig in hard. My tickling never hurts, ever.
2-My tickling is always combined, and often preceeded by, sexual teasing and forplay, combining pleasureable sexual sensations with the tickling from very early in the experience. I have been told by several women that this aspect was what converted them from tickle haters to tickle lovers.
3-The fact that I make a point giving my 'lee two or more tickled climaxes before I even begin to seek my own sexual release, and the fact that they can see on my face how much it thrills me to observe her enjoying a tickled orgasm that I'm giving her. And it really does. I enjoy my 'lees climaxes very nearly as much as I enjoy my own.
4-My very protective and respectful attitude towards them, and towards women in general. To me, BDSM and tickling are sexual games only, and do not carry over into the other aspects of life. When my 'lee and I are not actually engaged in tickling activities, I treat her as an equal and mean it.
Again, more than one woman has told me that they had come to see me as a natural protector and defender, and that this gave her the trust and confidence to permit me to first tickle her, and later to tickle her in bondage. It was a feeling of complete confidence that not only would I never deliberately harm or hurt her, but that I would take every precaution to ensure that she not be hurt or harmed by accident, and could also be relied on
to prevent anyone or anything else from harming or hurting her while she was with me.
The fact that such feelings on their part were in fact quite correct didn't hurt either.
A couple of weeks ago, on an other thread, I posted a synopsis of a scholarly treatise I once did on the bio-evolutionary origins of both BDSM and tickling.
Rather than ask anyone to look it up, I'll repost it now.
My take on the origins of DS goes to an ongoing problem in Paleoanthropolgy; why is it so consistently difficult for professionals in that field to find analogues to human behavior patterns in other primates? The answer is that they are ignoring a major fact of evolutionary biology; the genetically selected behaviors any animal species keeps and passes on to future generations are determined primarily by the ecological niche that species occupies in its environment.
The pretribal, indeed precultural human animal occupied an ecological niche called 'cursorial hunter'. No other primate has ever occupied a niche even remotely similar, hence the lack of analogous behavior patterns. The only other species to occupy that niche in the history of this planet have been Wolves and Feral Dogs.
If one looks at the behavior patterns found in Wolf and Dog packs, EVERYTHING you see has close analogies in human behavior patterns!
Wolf packs have dominant Alpha males, secondary Beta males and submissive Gamma males. The female Wolves have their own, separate dominance order. In general, there is one chief dominant Pack Alpha and one or more Deta lieutenants, totaling one third of the male adults in the pack. All the females and all theGamma males are submissive to the Alphas and Betas. The Gammas are submissive to the females.
Anyone familiar with the scene has noticed, and perhaps wondered why, submissives seem to outnumber dominants in all categories. Straight, Gay, Bi, Male, Female, there are always more subs than doms. It's a holdover from a time when the survival of the species was furthered by such patterns of subordination. In any survival-critical emergency, there had to be someone in charge, whose orders would be obeyed without question.
Another pattern which ensured the strongest possible offspring was that the females simply would not mate with the Gamma males, who often engaged in homosexual relationships to relieve their needs. This is seen in Wolf and Dog packs today. This was biologically engineered into our genetic makeup by evolution, and explains why even the most liberated woman feels attracted to a dominant man, while even the most liberated man feels the need for some degree of submissiveness from his woman.
The fact is, of course, that modern technological society has made these patterns of D & S totally unnecessary, which is why I prefer D & S ONLY in the bedroom. The fact we no longer need these patterns does not cause them to automatically go away, for two reasons.
First, it takes about 100,000 years for evolution to effect any major change in a species, and conditions which made male dominance/female submission no longer a survival advantage are less than 100 years old IN THIS COUNTRY. In many parts of the world, Male D/female S is still a powerful survival advantage.
Second, an evolved trait does not evolve away just because it is not an advantage anymore. Look at our tail bones and appendixes. To evolve away, a trait must become a significant disadvantage, so that those who do NOT have it are much more likely to survive and have children than those who do.
That has not happened with D & S, in fact quite the contrary.
This all relates to tickling too. Among Wolves and Dogs, in order to resolve dominance disputes without actual injury to a valuable pack member, they have evolved a submission behavior which turns off further aggression by the dominant victor like throwing a switch; flipping onto the back and exposing the vitals to the dominant animal. The dominant responds by very lightly touching the tips of it's fangs to the throat or belly of the submissive, symbolizing that the dominant could have fatally injured the submissive but chose not to.
In humans, the analogous behavior is tickling. If you look at all the places on the human body that are usually ticklish, they are all areas where an injury would be fatal to an animal whose survival depended on running with a hunting pack, or take away it's ability to successfully have/rear offspring.
Toes/soles of feet-ability to run
backs of knees/kneecaps-ability to run
inner thighs-femoral artery (if it is cut, the individual bleeds to death in 30 seconds)
backs of thighs-hamstring tendon
hips-pelvic joints
lower belly-reproductive organs
ribs/sides-all the major organs in the body trunk
underarms-major nerves and arteries
neck/throat/under chin-major nerves and arteries/windpipe
breasts(women)-ability to feed newborns.
This is why for a human to allow another to tickle/tease them is a profoundly submissive act, and to choose to take advantage of that permission is a profoundly dominant act. One thing makes this expression of deep submission and dominance different for humans than dogs or wolves. While wolves are sexually active only once a year when the females come into heat and their females activate the sex drives of the males, and for dogs it's about every month and a half, humans alone are sexually active 24/7/365 while physically capable.
For this reason, most expressions of dominance and submission among humans take on sexual overtones. For any person to allow another to tickle them will often involve arousal for both. I have noticed that when a bound person of either sex and any orientation is tickled, they become aroused,(some will adamantly not admit it!)unless severe pain interferes. Even if the tickler is an inappropriate sex partner, such as an animal, a machine, a person of the wrong sex for the victims usual orientation, or an underage child this remains true.
This fact is sometimes used by doms to cause profound embarrassment and humiliation to a sub, as by binding the sub and letting them become aroused by a machine dragging feathers across a sensitive spot, or a dog, cat or goat licking some sweet or savory substance off of a sole or an armpit, or even by having a child or a person of the wrong sex for the sub's orientation tickle the sub. The Dom will then point out all the signs of the subs arousal and make fun of them for it.
Let me add that about three years after I first wrote this study, the noted Paleoanthroplologist Desmond Morris, author of "The Naked Ape" and other books about the origins of humanity, wrote a book about the close and ancient relationship between Humans and Dogs. In this book, he confirmed everything in my treatise, and added many specific examples of how human and lupine or canine behavior patterns are nearly identical.
Much which deserves thought.
Mastertank1
We who play and dance are thought mad by they who hear no music.