Growing up I was terrified of being tickled because I didn't understand the butterflies-in-the-stomach thing and it scared me. I was, however, the eldest of ten grandkids and disabled-I had to keep order somehow 😛 I was able to 'hold it in' whenever any of them tried to tickle me back and therefor got a reputation for being not ticklish (it is worth mentioning I am ticklish, but not very aside from some spots).
When I hit about fourteen or fifteen I started having fantasies about being a REALLY evil tickler in, 'adult' situations with helpless guys. I justified my fantasies by thinking that, in the fantasies, they enjoyed it-though pushing aside the thoughts of 'nobody likes being tickled, this is just cruel' wasn't easy for someone like me. My stepsiblings, one stepbrother and one stepsister, both older than me, used to get into tickle fights all the time. Sometimes they would encourage me to help but I was too shy and the butterflies were too strong and I just sat there and watched with what was, in retrospect, probably a little too much fascination >___<
When I was...fifteen, I think? I yahoo'd (there was no google yet) the word "tickling" on vacation once and....bam. I wasn't the only one. I remember the first thing I came across was a story of Christina Agularia and Brittany Spears tickling each other after being kidnapped by the narrator of the story-and at the end he found himself tied and at their mercy. I vividly remember the narrator saying that they probably 'interpreted (the look on his face) as fear' and thinking, "well what else could it be?" Very shortly after I discovered that lees exist and boy was that a relief!
Over the next year or two I realized that the idea of being tickled appeals to me. Not in the same way lerring does-but as I said, I grew up the eldest of the neighborhood kids and all my siblings/cousins, and being disabled I never let myself lose control. Being forced into losing control by friendly means by people who just want to see me lose my composure but in a friendly way? Therapeutic as all hell! I also realized that I'm bi and love the idea of tickling other women in 'adult' situations as well 😀 Met a guy here on TT and wound up marrying him.
Lerring can definitely take on a more sexual edge for me, while leeing is, except in very certain circumstances, all about the adrenaline rush and therapeutic loss of control. There's my origin story for ya, long and complex as I now realize it is >.> Srry about that.
~K