Suppressing my sexual preferences for 20 years

Hello,

I'd like to preface this post with two warnings:

1. This is a very personal story, and a long one at that. I have reached a point in my life where I need to tell this story in order to continue growing in my life, and I simply cannot hold this back anymore. Please understand that this is a very big step for me.
2. Some of the content in this post may be triggering for others who are struggling with pornography addiction.

I like big women. I think one of the most attractive, beautiful things in the whole universe is a fat woman. I like the heaviness, I like the shape, the softness, the size, all of it. I've known that about myself since I was about five years old. The first time I ever remember feeling excited about someone else's body was when my parents hired a babysitter for me and my siblings when I was five. She was very big, and I actually remember asking her if I could touch her fat. Obviously, it wasn't a sexual thing for me at that point (remember, I was only five), but I was totally fascinated by it. I wanted to know what it felt like to be physically close to a big woman. That desire is one of my earliest memories. The first time I masturbated, I didn't even know that I was masturbating. No one had ever taught me how to do it, and I had never watched any porn before I did it. It was sort of a blur for me, but I remember one detail very clearly: I was thinking about a fat woman when I did it. The first time I masturbated all the way to orgasm, I was thinking of a fat woman. I won't go into detail about the exact things I was thinking about (I don't want to trigger anyone), but I remember it quite clearly even though that day was over a decade ago. As I continued to go through puberty, my fascination with fat women grew into what might most accurately be described as a sexual preference (or orientation).

Of course, I also find fit women attractive. However, that seemed to come later in my life. It wasn't until I was deeper into puberty that I also discovered I was attracted to thin women. However, my attraction to fat women has never faded, and at some points in my life it has felt far stronger than my attraction to any other type of person.

I have always felt certain about my attraction to fat women, but it's always been a tremendous challenge for me as well.

I think my mother had somewhat of an influence on me. She is a very small, very skinny woman, and that's very important to her. She frequently comments on her own body image, on how she would like to lose weight, and about dieting and how she wishes she was young again so she could be skinny again. Being thin is just super important to her (though I would say her obsession with it is unhealthy). I've always wondered what she would think if she found out I thought fat was beautiful. I was always afraid she would think I was weird, or that my wiring was wrong.

Having talked about my mother, I must now move on to talk about my father. Unfortunately, he had a far more negative impact on me when it comes to my sexuality. My father is an alcoholic, he's abusive (verbally and physically), he's depressed, and his go-to mechanism for achieving what he wants in life is manipulating people with guilt and shame. A large percentage of what comes out of my dad's mouth is mean-spirited and directed towards groups of people. He's very racist (especially against blacks and mexicans), he makes fun of disabled people, and he likes poking fun at nerdy people who get enjoyment from exploring something unique. However, this is a post about my sexuality, so I'll get straight to the point: my dad relentlessly mocks fat women. He always has. He ridicules fat women so much that he has a unique "slur" that he uses to describe them. He calls big women "mugwumps", I guess with the goal of dehumanizing them to make them easier to make fun of or gawk at in disgust. He will use that word in public (i.e. "Wow! Look at that mugwump"). He laughs at them. One of his best friends is married to a big woman, and my dad always talks about how disgusting his wife is and how he thinks his friend is such a loser for marrying her. I don't think he understood that every time he made one of those jokes, it hurt me. Every time he ridiculed someone that I thought was beautiful, I felt like a freak. Every time he used the word "mugwump", it made it more important for me to keep my admiration of fat women a secret from him. I didn't want to become the subject of ridicule. I didn't want to become a loser like his friend.

So, where am I now? Well, I'm 25 years old and, for the most part, my attraction to fat women is still a secret. It's completely miserable, and I didn't realize just how miserable I was about this whole thing until I started writing this out. I've dated many women in my life (most of them in high school. After high school, things slowed down and I started taking on longer, more serious relationships), and all of them have been very thin or around average weight. I am currently dating a woman who has an average body type. I love very much and I think she is very beautiful. In an earlier paragraph, I mentioned that one of my earliest memories in life was my desire to be physically close to a fat woman. Well, I still have that desire today. I cannot separate it from my identity (nor do I really want to). The tragic thing is that I've never explored this desire in the real world, never sought it out, and always kept it as a distant fantasy. It's tragic on a level similar to (I can only imagine) an in-closet gay man who comes from a Mormon family. That desire is still with me, but it's still a secret, still something I'm afraid of, and that makes me really sad.

Some gay men keep their sexual orientation a secret for their whole lives. Some date women, even get married and have children, and they never tell. There are a lot of gay men who do that. That's what I've been doing up to this point. I've been dating thin women my whole life, but I'm still really curious about what it's like to date a fat woman. I'm still so curious about it, and I still think they're so beautiful. I'm such a loving, intimate, authentic, open person and I want to share that with someone that I think is beautiful.

Having said all of that, my attraction to fat women isn't entirely a secret. Now that I think of it, I've told many people about it. I've told both of my siblings, I've told two of my ex-girlfriends, I've told my current girlfriend, and I've even told my mother about it. All of those people have accepted me for who I am, and none of them were repulsed by it, which has given me evidence that I have nothing to be afraid of, and that I should be happy with who I am and just live the life that I want to live. I haven't told any of my closest guy-friends, but I am quite certain they would accept me without any judgment if I told them about it.

The most important person I haven't told yet is my father. Just thinking about it feels like looking up at the summit of Mt. Everest from the base. It feels like one of the biggest challenges in my entire life. However, now that I write it out, I realize how possible it is. It's not really a challenge. I really need to just tell him. I need to just tell him how I really feel. I need for him to know not only that I am this way, but that he hurt me and encouraged me to suppress my true self for my entire life. I need him to know the damage he's caused in my life, or I may never heal from it.

That's all I can think to write for now. Thanks for reading, if you did.

 

Hey, I appreciate the response. Maybe this didn't come through clearly in my post, but I really do accept myself for who I am. I understand that I'm not weird and that it's not a big deal that I'm attracted to big women (though it took me most of my life to come to that conclusion). So, I'm not really trying to look for advice in that department. I'm comfortable and happy with who I am.

I think I was trying more to focus on the feelings of shame I felt about it in the past and how that might still be affecting where I'm at right now. I don't want the things I struggled with in my childhood (particularly with my father) to keep me from living the sort of life I really want to live.

 

Thanks for validating that. I know that to be true deep down inside, it's just easy to forget it sometimes.

Yeah, that sounds extremely liberating, and I feel like I'm prepared to do that now that I've written this post and put my feelings about it into words in a safe environment. Now that I've written about it, it doesn't feel like I have this demon to face anymore. It feels like there's just a conversation I need to have.

 

That is really sad, and I say that in a non-judgmental way. Rather, I say that in an empathetic way because I know how that feels.

If you're dating someone to get respect or admiration from other people, then you're not dating to make yourself happy or because it's something that you want out of life. In one sense, you're doing it to please other people, but what does that really do for you? I don't want to live my life that way anymore.

 

The purpose of talking to my father isn't to get him to understand about my sexuality. I have already accepted the possibility that he may never understand that. Rather, the idea is to just get some closure on the pain he caused me.

I'm not uncomfortable about my preferences. I'm very happy with who I am.

 

Hey, man. I really appreciate that you took the time to read through what I wrote and that you weighed in on the situation, but I'm not really struggling to get independent from my parents. I've been independent from them for many years at this point, and I only visit or talk to them when I want to or for holidays and other major events. I only mentioned them because of the impact they had on me during my most formative years. I'm not really holding on to the past, and I'm very much in the present moment.

No... preference isn't the right word. I don't really prefer a particular body style over any other, I think a better way to describe it is that my tastes are wider than most people's are.

That's not going to happen. I know what I like and I know how I am.

Again, I really appreciate your thoughts on the matter, but it's just not accurate. I don't have a desire to be with a bigger woman because I want to know whether or not I'm really attracted to them. It's not an experiment to figure out whether it's real or just some childhood obsession. I already know that it's real. I already know what I like, and I'm comfortable with who I am. It's more just that I'm curious about how it actually feels, and I think that curiosity is consistent with my security in who I am, if that makes sense.

Please don't take my comment the wrong way. As I've been saying, I appreciate your response, but I just think I need to make myself more clear so that you really understand where I'm coming from.

 

I appreciate the humility, and don't worry about it. No hard feelings.

To answer your question about why I haven't had that sort of experience, I guess there are many different reasons. The main one is that I'm not really trying to force it to happen. I've never really met a bigger woman that I clicked with well enough to pursue a relationship with her, just by coincidence I presume. I've never actively sought out women with that body type (I've never really actively sought out women at all, really. My relationships have all just sort of danced in and out of my life by luck). My struggle isn't with actually meeting and dating bigger women. It's more of an internal struggle with accepting myself and finding peace with who I am. I made this post just to dump my feelings about all of that, but I am by no means in crisis over this matter. It's just something that's important to me. I actually think I've been making quite a lot of progress on it lately!