Does an Encourager or the Internet "turn" a guy into a Gainer?

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?

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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.