A turning point in my most recent relationship, which ended about 15 months ago, was when I mentioned to my girlfriend that I liked her feet, and she said, “OH GOD, tell me you’re not one of those people.”
What? I like looking at women’s feet, okay? Foot-fetishism is actually the most-common fetish in the world towards a non-sexual body part.
It marked the beginning of the end, as I started to think that I couldn’t trust her with my innermost thoughts.
She also said no to forehead kisses, and though we occasionally held hands when she felt like it (she had a thing against being touched, in general, which I tried to respect), she absolutely refused to hold my left hand, which twitches due to tardive dyskinesia. It made me feel about six inches tall.
I could never be in a relationship with someone like that. My husband and I engage in all sorts of physical play, including some BDSM (that’s why we have a dungeon in the attic). I can’t imagine having to hold back feelings, sexual or otherwise.
Our basement is a stifling place with low ceilings. Our unfinished attic, on the other hand, is shaped like an irregular pyramid that gets very high near the center, and has wonderful beams for suspending things. The only problem is there’s no heat or A/C.
That’s how a dungeon is 'sposed to be! Bonus points if it’s below the water table so there’s always a leaky layer of water on the floor with moss growing on the rocky walls.
I have no issues with a foot fetish but this is an interesting statement to me:
Given how common the fetish is why wouldn’t we consider it a sexual body part? Is it any less a sexual part than breasts? (This isn’t criticism; it’s just me musing on sexuality.)
I’ve thought about this too, as someone else with a foot fetish, and the only answer that makes sense to me is that we consider body parts sexual if they change at puberty and are different between the male and female sexes.
Granted, female feet tend to be smaller on average, and somehow it seems I can tell the difference more than you’d expect by chance, but I can’t really spell out a difference. I can with genitals, breasts, butts, legs, hips, and even lips to some degree.
Then there’s the fact that there are a lot of people full on disgusted by feet, to the point that I once thought maybe that was the source of the fetish, where people wind up associating sex with “dirty” due to our more puritanical attitudes. But then that didn’t seem to square with those who only like 'em clean, or with the fetish not declining as we become more sex positive.
Granted, these are just my musings, and I fully expect someone to come in and show how it doesn’t really work.
As for the OP: I think some of it is the disgust some people feel for feet, and some of it is how a lot of people become aware of the fetish in the first place: by some creep being reported on the news, or someone making tons of creepy comments online because someone showed their bare foot in a photo/video. I’ve long told the latter to stop doing that as it makes things worse for everyone.
This is an interesting thought. I’m pretty vanilla, and a lot of kinks turn me off, but I would be comfortable with a guy with a foot fetish. And… yeah, how’s that really different from a guy who is into breasts, anyway?
The fear with a fetish is that one’s partner only sees the body part, and not the entire person. Like “I love your boobs, and what was your name again?” I don’t think that was the case with the OP. It sounded like the ex-GF had her own challenges already.
OTOH, it seems like there are many people, probably more men than women, who are not fetishists in any way, but simply view their entire BF/GF as little more than a life support system for genitals. They’re just there for the sex (plain vanilla sex) and little else about them is of any interest.
That sort of thinking is certainly at the center of pickup culture, which again is apparently more commonly a male than female taste.
Point well taken. She’s a former trauma victim. She found it hard to believe I could even be attracted to her, and she’s a very lovely woman. Just loco in the cabasa, as I found out.
Before getting married I “laid my kink cards on the table,” as Dan Savage advises. This included my ABDL fetish. Quite predictably my wife did not share my interests, but seemed like she was willing to give me leeway to indulge in my kink without per participation. And so I did, mostly when she wasn’t around (different work schedules, business trips, etc.). On those rare occasions when I wore a diaper with her around, that was pretty much all I did (admittedly it would have been a bit much to actually use it in front of her). But whenever she initially became aware that I was wearing in her presence, her disappointment was palpable; she even told me on more than one occasion that “it was not a sexy look.” And then for the rest of the day (however long I was wearing), she would do her best to completely ignore it, as if it wasn’t there, almost like a kind of denial, like she couldn’t wait for it to be gone. Ultimately I always ended up feeling very self-indulgent and self-conscious, and so I’ve done it less and less with her around. The past 15 months (the pandemic), with both of us working from home and nobody traveling anywhere, have afforded me almost no privacy. It’s been frustrating in this regard.
I’ve explored lots of other oddball kinks on the internet, finding things that interest me, but the way things have gone so far there’s not much I feel safe sharing with her.
I get that, but as you point out, the same can be easily true of the more traditional sexy body parts. Growing up, there was always that one guy who acted like women’s value was all in whatever body part they find attractive.
I think maybe it’s the word “fetish,” which was originally a term that originally referred to an inanimate object worshiped as having magical powers. The connotation when it was applied sexually was that it meant a fixation or obsession with that particular thing, being very perverted.
I’ve definitely seen older people who obviously find feet attractive who don’t like to call it a fetish, and I think that’s why. The term is too loaded for them. I mean, even Tarantino of all prefers not to use that term.
In that case, her issues with sexual intimacy make a lot of sense, and may have nothing to do with the fetish itself. Assuming you mean sexual trauma, it can be very hard for people who have been abused in that way to feel comfortable with their body as a sexual thing, as doing so brings out the hurt. They may have to move a lot more slowly into that sort of thing, and some things they may never be comfortable with.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with you breaking up with her. You may not be sexually compatible with that, which is fine, and, in the long run, breaking up with her so she can find someone more compatible is a kindness. Still, I would have trouble doing that while not wanting to play into her idea that she isn’t attractive, and thus don’t envy you.