benthetickler
Registered User
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2023
- Messages
- 7
- Points
- 1
Hi all. This is a long post so all the TL;DR folks are warned to turn away now. It also relates specifically to the UK so may be less relevant for those from elsewhere.
This post is a bit of an observational rant plus an appeal. You'll see what I mean as we go on.
First, a little bit about me. I am a straight male ler in my mid-30s, currently living not too far from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. I have been into tickling and fantasising about tickling girls since I was a very young child (I'm thinking 3 or 4), and rarely a day goes by when I don't think about it.
I was lucky enough, fairly young in life, to end up meeting and marrying someone who happily embraced my fetish, and my wife and I had quite a few tied tickling sessions together, and some of them were great. However, for various reasons personal to me that outlet has run dry, but the urge to still play at my fetish remains. Hence about 5 years ago I began to see if I could reach out into the wider scene to find anyone else to have some fun with.
I began by joining a couple of fetish dating-type sites specific to tickling. But despite a couple of near-misses I was not successful going down this route - sometimes directly contacting people but receiving no response. Then, back in the spring of this year, I was finally unexpectedly contacted by someone via one of those sites, and after a few false starts we ended up meeting and having a session together. Despite my relative lack of experience, having never tickled anyone other than my wife before, I received glowing compliments from my ticklee - who has a decent amount of experience herself - who told me that I was the first tickler she's ever played with who successfully "ruined" her to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. Needless to say, I was quite proud of this review!
But this is where the gripes come in. When I first put myself out there looking for tickle partners five years ago, I never expected that it would be so difficult to find any, and yet my ticklee apparently had had huge success finding multiple partners in just a few months, and seemed to find it pretty easy. Encouraged by that, and taking some pointers from her, I went away over the next few weeks and began to widen my searches. I posted ads online in several places with big reach, including Reddit, FetLife and right here in the Personals section of the TMF.
I received precisely ZERO replies anywhere.
I learned some uncomfortable things during this period, as I consistently met with failure. Watching the ticklee I had met almost literally just having to stand up and ring a bell and watch them all come at her while I was having no luck whatsoever was very galling. During recent months I sank the closest to a form of depression I have ever experienced in my life. I wasn't sleeping. My failures were taking chunks out of my mental health. It is only in recent weeks, as I've come to some sort of acceptance about the hopelessness of it all, that I've gone back to something like normal again mentally and emotionally.
But what I discovered during those months since my first session with a real fetishist disturbed and disappointed me. Looking into these supposed "communities" made me realise how insular they are. From everything I've seen, it basically appears to me that the tickling "scene" in the UK, such as it is, is basically run by a handful of men who hoard all the spoils for themselves. If you are a woman (or a gay man perhaps), you can easily get into this club, because you are what they want. But if you're a straight male ler like me, you can't get into the club, because they have no use for you, and they also don't want you competing with them.
Looking around FetLife, for example, I found multiple female lees who seemed to be almost semi-pros, and their profiles all had a variation of the same message in them: "I am not doing private sessions, so don't ask. I am only playing with these specific people, or only working with professional video producers. This is a closed club, and you ain't in it."
So my extremely negative view of the tickling "community" is that it is in fact a rigged game. A handful of people have all the fun, and you can join the club instantaneously if you are what a handful of powerful guys are looking for - as my ticklee has found and taken advantage of - but if you're someone like me you can get stay in the car park and hope for a lucky stray like I got.
Does anyone want to respond to this and argue that this is NOT the case? Or do others agree with me? Have others had the same struggles I have? I'd love to hear people's take on it.
But here's the final part, where the appeal comes in. There's one way people can prove to me that my view of the tickling community is distorted or inaccurate - and that's to make me an offer. I have already met someone who happily travels all around the country meeting and being tickled by guys. There are undoubtedly many UK-based female lees here who must do the same thing. Among those, there MUST be some who would want to meet up with me for a tickling session some time. Even if you'd prefer to chat and get to know each other first, there MUST be some out there. And even if you are not a female lee, if you have spent any time on the scene at all you MUST know someone who might want to meet me. If any of this is true, respond here or PM me and change my mind about what I have experienced over the last few years.
If you have read this up until the end then thank you, and regardless of whether anyone has any offers for me or not, I hope this post might at least stimulate some interesting dscussion.
Cheers
Ben
This post is a bit of an observational rant plus an appeal. You'll see what I mean as we go on.
First, a little bit about me. I am a straight male ler in my mid-30s, currently living not too far from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. I have been into tickling and fantasising about tickling girls since I was a very young child (I'm thinking 3 or 4), and rarely a day goes by when I don't think about it.
I was lucky enough, fairly young in life, to end up meeting and marrying someone who happily embraced my fetish, and my wife and I had quite a few tied tickling sessions together, and some of them were great. However, for various reasons personal to me that outlet has run dry, but the urge to still play at my fetish remains. Hence about 5 years ago I began to see if I could reach out into the wider scene to find anyone else to have some fun with.
I began by joining a couple of fetish dating-type sites specific to tickling. But despite a couple of near-misses I was not successful going down this route - sometimes directly contacting people but receiving no response. Then, back in the spring of this year, I was finally unexpectedly contacted by someone via one of those sites, and after a few false starts we ended up meeting and having a session together. Despite my relative lack of experience, having never tickled anyone other than my wife before, I received glowing compliments from my ticklee - who has a decent amount of experience herself - who told me that I was the first tickler she's ever played with who successfully "ruined" her to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. Needless to say, I was quite proud of this review!
But this is where the gripes come in. When I first put myself out there looking for tickle partners five years ago, I never expected that it would be so difficult to find any, and yet my ticklee apparently had had huge success finding multiple partners in just a few months, and seemed to find it pretty easy. Encouraged by that, and taking some pointers from her, I went away over the next few weeks and began to widen my searches. I posted ads online in several places with big reach, including Reddit, FetLife and right here in the Personals section of the TMF.
I received precisely ZERO replies anywhere.
I learned some uncomfortable things during this period, as I consistently met with failure. Watching the ticklee I had met almost literally just having to stand up and ring a bell and watch them all come at her while I was having no luck whatsoever was very galling. During recent months I sank the closest to a form of depression I have ever experienced in my life. I wasn't sleeping. My failures were taking chunks out of my mental health. It is only in recent weeks, as I've come to some sort of acceptance about the hopelessness of it all, that I've gone back to something like normal again mentally and emotionally.
But what I discovered during those months since my first session with a real fetishist disturbed and disappointed me. Looking into these supposed "communities" made me realise how insular they are. From everything I've seen, it basically appears to me that the tickling "scene" in the UK, such as it is, is basically run by a handful of men who hoard all the spoils for themselves. If you are a woman (or a gay man perhaps), you can easily get into this club, because you are what they want. But if you're a straight male ler like me, you can't get into the club, because they have no use for you, and they also don't want you competing with them.
Looking around FetLife, for example, I found multiple female lees who seemed to be almost semi-pros, and their profiles all had a variation of the same message in them: "I am not doing private sessions, so don't ask. I am only playing with these specific people, or only working with professional video producers. This is a closed club, and you ain't in it."
So my extremely negative view of the tickling "community" is that it is in fact a rigged game. A handful of people have all the fun, and you can join the club instantaneously if you are what a handful of powerful guys are looking for - as my ticklee has found and taken advantage of - but if you're someone like me you can get stay in the car park and hope for a lucky stray like I got.
Does anyone want to respond to this and argue that this is NOT the case? Or do others agree with me? Have others had the same struggles I have? I'd love to hear people's take on it.
But here's the final part, where the appeal comes in. There's one way people can prove to me that my view of the tickling community is distorted or inaccurate - and that's to make me an offer. I have already met someone who happily travels all around the country meeting and being tickled by guys. There are undoubtedly many UK-based female lees here who must do the same thing. Among those, there MUST be some who would want to meet up with me for a tickling session some time. Even if you'd prefer to chat and get to know each other first, there MUST be some out there. And even if you are not a female lee, if you have spent any time on the scene at all you MUST know someone who might want to meet me. If any of this is true, respond here or PM me and change my mind about what I have experienced over the last few years.
If you have read this up until the end then thank you, and regardless of whether anyone has any offers for me or not, I hope this post might at least stimulate some interesting dscussion.
Cheers
Ben