I'm A Young Straight Female Attracted To Bigger Men---

Dear Honourable Professor of Fatology,

Firstly, thanks for providing such an interesting and thought-provoking blog.

I am a young straight female who is attracted to bigger men and, particularly, gaining. 

It goes without saying that my ideal partner is someone to I'm attracted to physically and emotionally/intellectually. However, such a guy is yet to have cropped up. I find myself at present attracted to a guy I get on great with, but he's not my physical type. I am shying away from making a move on him because my only sexual relationship was with a boyfriend of average build and the sex life was poor. Obviously, they are many factors, not just physical, which influence sexual enjoyment, but I am increasingly questioning to what extent sexual preferences are absolute or relative.

 That is to say; if someone identifies themselves as gay, they will probably only enjoy sex with the same gender and heterosexual relations will prove unsatisfactory. Can the same be applied to sexual preferences like fat admiration. Will most FA's only find sexual gratification with a large partner? Are gender preferences and physical preferences considered to be similar? Or are sexual kinks like FA/encouraging only considered comparable to, for example, preferring blondes etc? Though I suspect the answer is that such kinks are full of shades of grey, just like sexual orientation, I'd love to hear your input on the topic.

Thanks in advance,

gainerfan.

****

Yep, it frequently comes down to “shades of grey” and what you are willing to accept in meeting your own needs.

I remember listening a while ago to a radio “therapist” and a man called in and said he was engaged, but kept wondering, “While I care for her, what happens if tomorrow I walk into the post office and I meet the woman who meets all of my desires and needs?  Should I really marry the woman who meets some of them, or hold out until I meet the one who meets all of them?”  This led to a rant (I am pretty sure she had her own issues) of the difference between men and women.  According to her worldview, men hope to meet the woman who meets their needs, and women tend to find someone they enjoy and then “reconstruct” them to meet their needs.  In other words, according to that particular therapist, women will often choose a partner who isn’t a “perfect fit” with the expectation they can eventually reshape them “according to plan.”  She then spent a lot of time berating the caller in terms of how uncommitted he was to his fiancée, and always keeping his eye open for “the right woman” instead.

In your case, based on the radio therapist model,  this would mean getting involved with a guy who meets a lot of your criteria for a partner, and then setting off fattening him up to your erotic standards. A belly makeover.

Does this work?  It certainly can—and frankly, it’s a lot easier to blow up a straight guy than it is for a straight guy to get a female partner to deliberately plump up if she has no interest in this particular kink. A lot of straight men simply don’t feel the same social pressure to keep a 32 inch waist, particularly after they’ve entered into a serious relationship.  They can also feel a sense of “reward” of not having to do the “date” thing anymore, but kick back on the sofa with their female partner, a bowl of nachos, or a nightly bowl of ice cream, as the pounds pile on.  They often don’t internalize a “loss of control” over their bodies, the way many women and gay men do—but are simply following a “script” of “happy coupled people gain happy fat.”  If you follow through with this, you end up with a chubby hubby, but it can lack his eager participation in his own gain, and it can take longer than you might want.

 There’s also a certain ethical concern of your deliberate manipulation of a partner without his awareness of what’s going on.  Of course, if you’re upfront from the start that you prefer bigger guys “but I’m willing to try things out with you because I like you in so many other ways, other than you being too skinny,” your ethics aren’t on the line and you’ve pretty much covered your bases. This can eventually lead to the “win/win” situation where if he does balloon, you’re happy and he’s not fighting it.  From my personal professional experience, this can sometimes lead to a nasty ending, where the relationship fades (not due to the extra weight) and the husband is vicious about “you made me fat!” as an accusation.  This isn’t really related to the extra pounds, but is simply another arrow in his quiver for attacking his ex.

Related to this, you should be aware of something I don’t think I’ve mentioned in other blogs—sometimes, when a relationship gets rocky (again, for reasons outside of the gaining) a partner may accuse an encourager/feeder “You want me fat to make me unattractive to others, so you can force me to stay with you.”  This is so obviously NOT the motivation of someone who wants his or her partner chubbed up—but for someone who is “outside the kink,” it often comes up as a way of making sense of the interaction, particularly if the fattened one has low self-esteem issues, which the additional weight intensifies. (“I’m too fat now for anyone to want me.  It’s his/her fault for making me this way.”)  You might see from this description the low self-esteem partner is not in the healthiest place for a relationship with anyone.  In this case, it’s really not about the kink and the extra pounds.  He would have probably had trouble maintaining the relationship at any weight, and is someone who has challenges with taking personal responsibility for his own actions.  As a spouse, this feels like being married to an adolescent.  It’s also one of the reasons why half of most American marriages end up in divorce.

On another level, I did sex research on Inter-Racial Same-Sex Couples.   One of the questions I asked them was what ethnic group was most erotically attractive to the interviewee.  To my surprise, the answer was rarely matching the actual ethnicity of the partner of the person I was interviewing.  In other words, if he said, “I find Asian men the most erotic,” he was in a long term relationship with an African-American.   I would suggest this indicates the factors that ensure a long term relationship may not include a focused erotic aspect.  Or to put it another way, being with someone who provides you the most erotic charge, may not be the person who provides the other things a long term relationship requires.  Passion can often ebb and flow, and believe me, there are many married couples for whom sexual relations end up lower and lower in priority, as the couples focus on “team work” or simply enduring the challenges of American society, where a couple functions more easily than a single person can.  Finances are easier, and you get a tax break—and if you’re actually married, you get over 1,000 benefits that don’t exist for a same-sex couple under the current federal Defense of Marriage Act.  To be blunt—it isn’t always the fairytale “happily ever after” ending after the vows are said.  Many couples end up with lives of accepting “this is ok,” but not necessarily their dream.

 As I’ve written elsewhere, for most couples there is an inverse relationship to passion (lust) and intimacy.  As one goes up, the other goes down, so as you become more and more familiar (intimate) with a partner, your love-making tends to decline.  This is one of the reasons celebrities and politicians find it so easy to have a fling—a potential partner feels an attraction to the “idea” (image) of the person, rather than to the actual individual.  The spouse who has known the celebrity/politician for years, through the worst of times, through the farts and the drunken messes—is unable to see through the “rose-colored glasses” of the fan.  For example, “Do I really want to seduce you tonight, knowing you’ll probably just get sloppy drunk the way you have the last five times, and I’ll end up having to sleep in the wet spot on the bed…again.  Screw it—I’m just going to watch a movie and go to bed early.”

This is why for many couples “make up sex” is a very hot experience.  If you’ve had a fight, your intimacy declines, which allows the passion to spike.

But let me get back to more specifics regarding the gaining “kink” and what some in this community call “civilians” or “normies.”  To be frank, some have found a relationship with someone outside of the community is an ultimate dealbreaker, and after a number of attempts give up and decide they will only be involved with other community members in the future.  That’s the downside.  But this is frequently related to conflict.  A “civilian” partner is ok being with a (gainer) partner who is 30 pounds “overweight” but loses an erotic response when the partner becomes 150 pounds “overweight.”  An encourager/feeder partner is delighted with a “civilian” partner who balloons up, but when the partner hits his own “last straw” of having outgrown all his clothes and getting teased by his own family and peers as a “fat pig”—the partner declares he’s going on a weight loss regimen.

This is where the whole issue of compromise and what you do and don’t need in a functional relationship comes into play.  If I only had a nickel for every time a patient told me “I don’t really find my partner sexually attractive any longer, and I end up fantasizing I’m with a different partner (or that my partner has become a superchub or that I’ve gained weight).”  I want to emphasize this is not restricted to the gaining community.  It’s a pretty common situation among couples in long term relationships.  Some cope with it by lowering their sexual expectations.  Some have affairs.  Some seek therapy to improve the quality of their relationships. 

Solely based on what you’ve shared, I’m unsure how important the fat “needs” are that you require for your own happiness.  On a personal disclosure level, I have had in my younger days, a number of relationships with men who have worked as professional models but while I cared for them deeply (and still have a loving (and non-sexual) involvement with them), in order to achieve orgasm, I would need to fantasize about being with a heavier guy, or imagine them being a lot better fed.  But this wasn’t their issue—it was mine.  From a personal and professional standpoint, they wanted to keep their six-pack abs.  Gaining didn’t have an erotic component for them, the way it did for me.

You have a tremendous advantage as a straight woman dating straight men.  Unless they are working as professional models, some weight gain is actually to be expected.  But if you want a really big guy (for straight couples, I’ve heard this called “cellulite surfing”) not all standard straight guys are going to accommodate you by doubling their weight.  There’s also a major level of excitement when you’re with someone who is actively involved in the gaining scene that you just don’t get with a partner who constantly bitches that his pants are too tight.

My suggestion?  I tell a lot of clients—“Sometimes you need to know what you don’t want to discover what it is you DO want.”  You may have to go through the experience of being with “civilians” to see if your personal erotic needs can be met to your satisfaction for a long term relationship.

The other question I would have for you—if your eroticism is tied to being with a fat guy, is there a reason you are dating skinny guys that don’t really “float your boat?”  As a therapist, I frequently see individuals who are unconsciously frightened or uncomfortable with the thought of being in a relationship so they are drawn to one that frankly “won’t work.”  I’ve mentioned elsewhere women who have been sexually abused often end up dating closeted gay men because unlike straight guys, the closeted ones don’t pressure a women for sex, and therefore feel “safer.”  This frequently leads to unfulfilled marriages where the woman is not sexually fulfilled and the husband certainly isn’t.  Such marriages can last for many years, but aren’t always the happiest of environments.

You might want to explore what may be stopping you from pursuing a guy who is already a chub, or who has obvious potential to be the man of your (erotic) dreams.  Ultimately it comes down to your own standards.   How necessary is the “fat component” to your own happiness?  Some members of the gaining community end up with “civilian” partners who accept their partner is a bit “strange” and treat the gaining needs as a sort of weird hobby, or an outbreak of cat collecting.  “I don’t really understand this, but I’m willing to put up with it because I love him/her.”  This leads to what we call in psychology “compartmentalization,” where the gaining needs are restricted to doing it on-line or in fantasy, where you focus on doing it with people outside of your primary relationship.  In some cases the partner is fully aware of this “outlet” and sometimes not.  A partner who is aware of the “kink” may give permission for his/her partner to satisfy the feeding/fattening needs with someone outside the relationship.  Again, based on what you’ve shared, you’re in an unusually positive position where you don’t report wanting to gain yourself, but want your partner larger.  You’re not focused on changing yourself where a partner wonders “What happened to the woman I married?”  Most male partners eventually gain in the U.S. anyway, so all you need is patience.  I just don’t know the specifics of your own “kink” where you might need the cooperation and direct involvement of a partner to gain.  If this is a major element of your kink, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to satisfy your erotic needs with a reluctant and underweight partner.

Another thing I often hear—is it shallow that I want a specific type of partner?  Well, how much will the “political correctness” of picking a partner who doesn’t arouse you ultimately satisfy you? Eroticism is only one part of a healthy relationship…but it certainly is a part of one.