I need to know I'm not alone

Ever since I can remember, even when I was little, I have had a fixation on weight gain. The more I developed sexually, the more sexual that facination became. After learning that there were whole Web sites dedicated to female and celebrity weight gain, I started abusing its media, when I was stressed, when I was lonely, when I wanted to celebrate. I'm a Christian and believe that this pattern of fantasy and abuse of images to regulate my emotions, the self-destructive pattern and social withdrawal that follows, is unhealthy for me emotionally, morally, spiritually, socially and even physically (when I'm in the middle of larger binges, I sometimes don't eat or neglect sleep). I've tried to stop, but ultimately I go back to these fantasies and these Web sites. Now, at 23, I'm in recovery for sexual addiction. The weekly meetings I attend help; the other members all struggle with addiction to pornography and in that sense know the mechanics of my struggle. But underneath the support they provide, I ultimately know that they don't understand. They don't know what it's like to be a fetishist, to have a paraphilia and to hate it.

Try to understand, it's not mere social pressure (and even less so religious pressure). I myself hate that I am this way. Weight gain arouses me in the most carnal sense, but I find it no other way attractive. All of my girlfriends have been petite, and I loved that about them; I adored their bodies. I hate that I can't make satisfactory sense out of why my body reacts the way it does to the ideas and images of women putting on weight. I hate that things could be going so fantastically in my relationship with my slender girlfriend, with whom I was so inredibly attracted, and yet at night I would be pulled toward videos, toward before & after photos, toward stories, that revolved around this fetish. I want always to be done with it, but it seems never to be done with me. I've read the advise a lot of people give online (though not necessarily here), to accept my attraction. But I don't want to. And I don't want to want to. I want to be normal, not as a betrayal of myself--myself is divided! I only want to be rid of this attraction that exists in the shadows alongside of attractions I am happier with, that are healtier for me, that don't draw me to staying up late and abusing pornography.

The reason that I post is this: Not to vent, not to confess. I've done that before, and I'm in presently in therapy; rather, I want to put my story out there and hope that someone will find themselves in it. I already know that there are people like me in that they share my fetish, but most of them are happy with it--I am not. I also know that there are people like me and are not happy with this paraphilia but can be; they're naturally attracted to larger women, and that can be fine for them if they make peace with the social tension they feel--but this also does not describe me. I finally know that a place like SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous) shares my struggle to stop abusing media and fantasy, but as I've said, I don't feel understood there. I post because I need to know that I'm not alone, that there are people with weight gain fetishes along with traditional attractions, that want to be free of their paraphilia. I want to talk to them. I just need to know that, in supplament to my 12-step group, there is someone else who knows the pain and the frustration of this curse.

-Brian W.

Welcome Brian.
Thank you for sharing your story with us. It's good to hear that you are in therapy and getting some support. Although I imagine it would be hard to do group therapy with people who don't quite understand your issues. I hope you find people to connect with here.