Narrowing
this into a question is going to be tricky...
You
helped me understand my 'fetish development' may likely be started by having a formative experience while coming into sexuality (with the
husky guy in my high school gym class). This initial
mind-mapping/hard-wiring explains the beginning, but now I'm
wondering if by internet hauntings and the handful of encounters I've
had with true gainers has deepened/further developed my 'interests'
to the point of "once you go fat (in the encourager sense) you
never go back." I wonder if I have warped myself and could not
ever really have a successful relationship with a "civilian."
I
first described myself as fat-neutral, then chubby-chaser years
later, but now I'd say I'm a full-blown encourager, no more excuses.
I can't deny that I think I'd be happiest with a gainer, not just a
casually fat guy. I have trouble imagining anyone but a genuine
gainer as a partner. Just like I've seen someone start off with just
a leather cap, then a harness, then into chaps and leather head to
toe.
I
know if I found Mr Right and he wasn't even fat, I could fall in love
with him and have a good relationship, but would always pine for a
fattening guy. I'm curious if there is a pattern with other folks
that means through life experiences, we keep branching off the main
trail until we can't find our way back. We keep having experiences
until we deepen our hard-wiring into a rut.
And
it leads me to a greater concern I have. I try not to interact
internet-wise with sub-25 guys because I fear I may be leading them
down one of those side trails by supporting/encouraging them just
when they are going through some hard-wiring times themselves. In
other words, they post videos or pics on gainers sites, and my
responses/encouragements (along with many others) leads them to
connect sex with their gaining, something they wouldn't get outside
the internet. I fear being responsible for coaxing a young guy into a
lifestyle that may endanger his health or reduce his chances of
finding happiness in the future. No matter what, the
gainer/encourager community is a minority within a minority within a
minority.
Science
says that anybody who gains a lot of weight fast in their teens/early
20s builds fat cells that always want to be plump, no matter how much
they exercise and starve later on. And I think I've found somewhere
that being fat/eating fattening things becomes a beta-endorphin
producing experience, so together, the body gets 'programmed' into
being a gainer both in the brain and in the cells.
I
found a video
of this young guy (I think he's about 20), that is so enthralling, I
see it in my head about every 30 seconds. I don't want to be
responsible, but he's so compelling, it's hard to not watch endlessly
and drool. If I support him, will my support hard-wire him into only
being sexually satisfied as a gainer, while his body at a
cellular/endorphin level keeps trying to make him a gainer too?
Before I found fat acceptance/gainer stuff on the web, I felt like a
unicorn. It's great when we can accept and support each other, but
when do we reach the other side of the sword?
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Let
me first give you a couple of personal disclosures in terms of my own
history. Years ago I remember an older woman explaining to me she
believed her gay brother was “straight” when he was growing up,
but when he left their community to join the military, “something
must have happened” because when he returned home he was then gay.
This makes perfect logical sense from her perspective, and it also
explains why so many extreme conservative types, particularly those
representing certain religious sects, fear the LGBT community. They
firmly believe their family members were “just fine” and then,
damn it, if they didn't “catch gay” from someone who was
infected, and if they had only stayed home and had not gone away to work,
to join the army, to college—then they would have “stayed
normal.”
The
other obvious explanation is the woman's brother had always been gay,
but didn't feel safe enough to express his true identity in their
rural community, and only felt safe enough to come out when he left
the community. When he finally returned home, he felt confident
enough to be his true self there as well. But for those people who
never left “home” to encounter the larger world, their
explanation seems real.
I
suspect you're making the same sort of illogical/logical
connections—that gainers were “standard males” and they “turned
into gainers” because they were infected by people like you. Or for
that matter—you were a “standard male,” but you got infected by
someone—maybe the husky high school student and BOOM! You became an
encourager, and/or the guy in your video de jour became a gainer
because he discovered a gainer related website.
In
my other disclosure, when I began working at our clinic, the Medical
Director was a psychiatrist and he was very helpful when I started off
with self-doubt that I might make a mistake and “break” a
patient—or more precisely, make the patient worse. He told me
patients tend to respond to therapy in a very predictable way. About
one third of them get better, about one third of them stay the same,
and about one third of them get worse. Later on in my career, very
large research studies were done in substance abuse treatment, and we
discovered a huge population of people who never went through therapy
at all—but still got better.
The
other thing he told me was that as therapists, upon the whole, we
don't have nearly as much of an influence on an individual patient as
we'd like to believe.
I
suspect you may be “over-thinking” this, and end up believing you
have a much bigger influence on younger guys (or guys in general)
than you really do. Did these young adults “morph” into gainers
because they met “pervy” older guys like you and if they had only
stayed home and with no Internet access, they would have remained at 18% body fat, or would have
continued to be jocks?
I
think the reality is much closer to what happened to the man who went
into the army and “came home gay.” The Internet and college (and
the military, btw) or relocating for a new job simply gave a lot of
people the freedom to more fully express themselves outside of the
restrictions they felt at home. As a Family Therapist, I feel there
are definitely some children who are strongly influenced by growing
up in families where one or both of the parents had a real hang-up
about body fat that was from a systems perspective, no different than
them growing up in a household where alcohol abuse was part of their
history and the rule was “You won't even burp a beer in this
house.” You know what the two best predictors are for you becoming
an alcoholic? The first is growing up in an alcoholic family. The
second best predictor is growing up in a tee-totaling household.
This is because from a systems perspective, there is no difference between
the two—they are simply the opposite ends of the same pole. Now,
pulling back for a bigger picture, it may well be one or both parents
came from fat families and one or both desired to be fat as well, but
for a number of reasons, became fixated on the idea that “fat was
evil' (hope all of you see how you can substitute “fat” for a lot
of other conditions that get demonized and the fight against what you
desire can screw up your life in a major way). That gives a real
“mixed message” to the kid growing up—that fat is
“wrong/bad/stupid/crazy/evil” and you have to guard yourself at
all times because your destiny is to become fat/sinful/turn gay.
IMPORTANT!
One of the hardest things to do when writing about this stuff is
trying to avoid a pathological slant on gaining/fat. It's so easy to
compare it to being prone to substance abuse because
general Western society has brainwashed us to think this way.
Substance abuse (as opposed to use—I'm talking about when it gets
to the point of interfering with one's life, as opposed to someone
who has a glass of wine with dinner) can be pathological. Many
believe people with addictive potential will suddenly become addicts
from the “first sip of alcohol,” or the “first toke” of pot.
This is so ingrained by the media and society, it's easy to “make
the jump” and falsely see a cause and effect relationship in other
parts of one's life—which can end up with people in your situation
wondering if you are guilty of “corrupting” an innocent by
offering him a second piece of cake, and that's equivalent to giving
an alcoholic their first drink. These are really very different
issues.
In
some of the more recent areas of research, some scientists are
suggesting we re-think our perception of sexual orientation. Sadly,
this also has a basis in pathology. The current stuff is based on
working with sexual abuse, particularly with pedophiles. It's so damn
hard to get past the pathology.
But
this has been an outgrowth of the greater acceptance in society of
gay and lesbians, where same-sex orientation is no longer
automatically seen as “wrong” or “sick.” It's now accepted
that you don't attempt “reparative therapy (i.e., pray away the
gay), an approach that has been labeled not only as “quackery”
but also as unethical and is now against the law in California (some
other states will also make this their law as well) because of the
terrible damage it's done to innocent LGBT youth.
What
if you saw being a gainer/encourager as a type of sexual orientation?
And as I have often suggested, I see a continuum—a spectrum of
gaining/encouraging/fat appreciation. There are some people who want
to be fat, and others who want a fat partner, but again—it's like
being on the same stick, but in a different place. Enjoying another
person gaining is structurally no different than enjoying your own
gaining. And indeed, some people enjoy gaining and being in a
relationship with someone who also enjoys gaining. Some people want
to skip the gaining and immediately be fat or have a partner of a certain size.
However, it makes sense to lump them all together as part of the
gainer community. But it does mean some gainers don't want to be
with an encourager who doesn't also want to gain—which as I
understand it from our previous discussion, might include your
experience.
This
also needs to exclude guys who get fat for reasons that are not
related to this as part of a “sexual orientation.” This would
include people who overeat as a type of self-medication, who are
often depressed, or true gluttons who enjoy a lot of good food and
little exercise, who would definitely swallow a pill if they could
keep their indulgent lifestyle and suddenly have a 30 inch waist—but
they don't value a 30 inch waist enough to diet and exercise. For
these two groups, because they don't have a “gainer sexual
orientation, they don't get an erotic charge out of the flab. This is
also why so many gainers have difficulty being in a relationship with
a “civilian” because it would basically be like having a gay man doing his best to feel an erotic attraction to a woman.
The
metaphor I've often used is a radio. You may be unaware of it, but
there can be many stations broadcasting in your area, and you have no
way of “tuning in” without a receiver. It may well be for some
gainers, they always had the “radio” (the ability to receive) but
it was tuned to the wrong station, so they never got a strong signal.
Then something changed (for example, they left home) and suddenly
they got the signal loud and strong. The point is they were always
“primed” to be gainers, but needed a supportive environment. In
the Bible, at one point Jesus shares the parable of the seeds—some
fall upon stony ground, and others fall upon fertile ground.
If
this theory is true, then it's likely you and a lot of other guys
were not only “born gay” but also born with a “gainer
orientation.” Outside exposure and experience didn't “make you
gay,” and didn't “make you a gainer.” I would go back and
suggest while from the outside, you might have perceived someone go
from one piece of leather apparel to becoming a big old leather
daddy, or a leather boy—that individual may not make that
connection. Instead they might describe themselves as having always
had a “leather mindset,” but needed a supportive environment to
manifest their inner self to their fullest potential.
Finally—let's
get back to your question of how we “program” our responses. I'm
again frustrated at the research I can use as reference is based on
pathology. A patient has a paraphilia, and how do we “fix” that?
I have always tried to separate gainers from people with paraphilia
because by definition, someone with a paraphilia has no direct
connection with another human being. They are incapable of
sustaining a “standard” relationship. For example, a very common
one is called in the lay community a “shoe fetish.” A guy (and
it's almost always a male—females tend to have a much lower rate of
paraphilias than males) may steal a woman's shoe and masturbate with
it. He wants no association with the woman—just with her shoe.
It
is statistically likely there are a small number of gainers who have
a fat paraphilia, where they don't want or need a partner, and are
unable to establish a relationship.
But
for the vast majority of gainers, if this is indeed a type of sexual
orientation, they are not only capable of forming a healthy
relationship—they want one. But if this is indeed a sexual
orientation, they may choose partners where having an erotic
connection is difficult if not impossible, just like a gay man dating
a woman. They can form close emotional relationships, but the sexual
component just isn't there.
With
a paraphilia, people can become “more efficient” in an erotic
process. The mechanism of how this is done is similar to the way you
have described playing a video in your mind—the more you do it, the
faster it lets you get off. But since you've brought up
neurotransmitters, there is a certain limitation in terms of how long
you can keep doing this and keep getting the same “pay off.” In
medication/drugs this is called “habituation,” where to get the same
“high,” you need to increase the frequency, or intensity, just as
someone used to getting high with one hit of pot may need to
eventually have more to get the same high.
In
other words, by the time you read this response, you may no longer be
running the particular video through your head on a daily basis, but
you may have replaced it with a new one. Six months, or a year from
now, if you stumble across the video again, it may spark a much
stronger reaction than it did the last time you used when, when you
had managed to sort of “wear it out.” There seems to be a
certain natural limitation in terms of “obsessing” on an erotic
charge. This is also something couples frequently experience, where
they get locked into a constant routine and their sexual excitement
and expression “gets dull” and they can benefit from sex therapy
to get “the old magic” back. This frequently involves changing
one or more element of their experience. This might include having
sex at a different time of day, or in a different location. If you're
masturbating it might also involve using your other hand or a
different type of lube.
Finally—this
is also moving away from a strict “cause and effect”
relationship, where the encounter with your “husky high school guy”
made you an encourager. In this model, you were born
with a gainer orientation just as you were born gay. The encounter
with the high school guy was when everything “came on-line” so
you became more fully aware of your “sexual orientation as a
gainer” at that particular point in time. It would be interesting
if at that point in time, you had “accidentally” gained weight,
and found that to be erotic. Would you then have “tipped over”
into an actual gainer instead of becoming an encourager? I don't have
an answer for this. Based on comments from a lot of gainers, they
were aware of the desire to be fat before they were able to gain,
just as a lot of adult gay and lesbians “knew” they were gay or
lesbian before they had the vocabulary to describe their identity.
But
there also seem to be a certain number of college age guys who hadn't
really thought about gaining, altered their food intake and level of
exercise because of unlimited access to the food hall and giving up
sports—plumped up, and found it erotic and decided they wanted to
keep fattening up. Maybe this group is the equivalent of
“bisexuals,” where it's still an orientation, but perhaps could
be described as “more flexible” in terms of being in a
relationship. There may be guys who never really thought about
gaining, but ended up in a relationship with someone like you and in
that supportive environment, found gaining to be erotic.
Let
me close by mentioning I have encountered individuals who tried
gaining in order to please an encourager or because as you described
it, for the first time got a lot of positive encouragement and
attention from members of the gainer community. In my personal
experience, most, if not all of these people were ultimately unhappy
with their body and frequently ended up angry at the gaining
community and blamed others for “making them fat.” If you work
with the model of gaining as a type of sexual orientation, this makes
perfect sense. This would have been like “reparative therapy,”
where a non-gainer was placed into a relationship with someone who
had the sexual orientation of a gainer—just like a gay man who
entered a relationship with a female partner. He can go through the
steps of imitating someone with a different orientation—but he
can't force himself to become straight—or a gainer.
