Feel like my fetish is ruining my sex life

[Beewell]

Hi, first off I want to say that I saw someone post something very similar on here about her experience. I wanted to point it out because it made me feel a lot less alone. For some reason I never hear girls talking about fetishes or “embarrassing” ones at that. I suppose it’s still taboo. But because of seeing mostly guys post about their experiences, for years I felt like an pervy outlier.

To get to it, I have a fart fetish. I have never written this or mentioned it to anyone before in my life, as I am so ashamed I just simply can’t tell anyone and let them associate my image with that. To be completely honest, I’ve had this since I was little, so I got what sexual pleasure I could out of it thinking I’d grow out of it. Now I’m 19 years old, and it still comes up regularly.

This may be hard to understand for other people so I’ll try to explain it as best as I can. I am only aroused by farts on screen —not in real life. This has helped me keep my fetish totally separate from my sex life and my boyfriend. For whatever reason, the idea of a woman farting turns me on, but when faced with it in real life, I have a normal reaction. Also, trying to watch fetish content grosses me out, and does nothing to help orgasm.

My best guess to how I got this fetish is that I learned to masturbate quite young, and like every kid thought farting was the funniest thing on the planet. I must have discovered the two simultaneously, and associated the sexual pleasure with the farts in my mind. As for the female aspect, I have no idea. I’m bisexual, for reference.

My fetish has caused a problem for me as I can rarely orgasm without it (I can think of only two occasions where I reached climax, neither was half as intense as when Im fantasizing) I’ve had multiple partners, and right now I’m in a very comfortable relationship, but I’ve never orgasmed during sex. Not once. It’s not because of lack of attraction, my body certainly gives me other signals to show that I am turned on, it’s just I can never reach climax. Lately I’ve been trying to enjoy sex anyways and put the idea of orgasming behind me, but because of social pressure I have repeatedly been faking orgasming with my boyfriend.

I feel like lying to him is wrong, but on the other side, I will never tell him about my fetish as I’m so unbelievably embarrassed (and also have no intention of bringing it into our sex life.)

Anyways, I’m looking for advice but also just wanting to get everything off my chest. I’ve had this be a secret for 7+ years at this point and im just tired of it.

[Heather]

You know, often when people here post about fetishes, they're using that term incorrectly and they just mean something they enjoy or are excited by. In your case, where it's something that feels mostly essential for arousal or orgasm, we are actually talking about a fetish, and the way you're feeling about this is a way a lot of people with fetishes feel.

That's understandable, since in the culture most of us have lived in, what's presented as "normal" human sexuality is much, much narrower than the diversity of human sexuality actually encapsulates, and that very much includes fetishes like yours. There's not likely going to be anything any one person can say once to change how embarrassed you feel, but I hope that maybe this conversation can be a start to changing that over time.

I'm so sorry that this has been something you have felt like you have to keep a secret, and I am so glad you at least felt able to unburden yourself of that here.

Fetishes -- or people just plain being turned on by -- based in human body functions are not at all uncommon, and in fact, yours, in particular, is one of the most common. I don't know if it helps you to think about how many people feel about ejaculate like you do about farts (it's a LOT of people), but as far as I'm concerned, those two things are pretty darn common. It's all just body stuff, you know? The cultural idea that somehow a fart is more gross or unacceptable than a sneeze or a burp or even a sigh feels really arbitrary to me, and mostly based in our culture's fear and shame of anything to do with the anus, rectum and bowels, period, all, again, body parts and systems no more or less acceptable than breasts, mouths or lungs.

Can you tell me a little about why you don't feel able to tell your partner, or why this feels like something you don't feel like you could ask for in your sexual life? Is that about this particular partner, or do you feel like, at this stage of your life, that's just not something you would feel able to tell any partner about?