A Diaper Fetish Explained, at Least for Me

While this isn't a fictional story, I'm placing it here because it is a story nonetheless. It's the story of my life and how I got here, with a bit of theory mixed in, naturally.

I think I may have stumbled upon the reason for my diaper/baby fetish. And I believe I have Freud to thank for that.

You see, I recently gave my English students Freud’s essay on the Oedipus complex. As an introduction to his work, I explained Freud’s theory of the mind: id, ego, and superego. I explained that Freud believed that repressed feelings—those instinctual feelings held within the “id” part of our brains—that cannot find a suitable form of release languish within our brains and start to take hold of our subconscious minds. That is, until the repressed feelings are no longer content to stay there. Bits and pieces then start to surface, mostly in the form of dreams, and if the root of those feelings is not satisfied (not dealt with in a way acceptable to both the ego and the id) then a neurosis develops, and in some cases, a fetish: an obsession that has been transformed into the sexualization of a nonsexual object or scenario.

Long after the class had moved onto other essays, my brain had latched onto Freud’s theory of the mind. Ah! Good ol’ Freud! His theories have since been surpassed by others, but there’s still something in them that holds the imagination, something elemental. I’ve read up on other theories, but Freud and Jung seem to fire the imagination in a way that others simply have not.

Anyway, I believe the above explanation has happened to me. When I was younger, much younger, I went through a very difficult phase of my life, so difficult in fact that the memory of it still fills me with shame and embarrassment. That period was potty training.

I believe I wasn’t ready. My parents, having no other alternative available to them at the time, believed otherwise. In their experience, children simply did not wear diapers past a certain age, and I believe that age was three. To have a child who wears diapers past the age of three was an embarrassment for them, an undesirable report on their abilities as successful parents.

It was a difficult time for all of us. When I wasn’t successful in attempts to make it to the bathroom, I was punished with either a spanking or I was scolded for having an accident. “Big boys,” you see, don’t have accidents.

Many people have experienced this same type of trouble with potty training, and I do believe learning how to control our bodies is essential for our growth, not a natural growth—because it is more “natural” to address our bodily functions as they come—but for our social growth. It simply is not socially acceptable for us to not have control over our bodily functions. Such things are to be done in a more private matter. In the bathroom.

Well, I feared bathrooms. Feared them because they were huge, ugly, and loud places. As a child I was strangely sensitive to loud noises, and a flushing toilet that reverberated against the tiled walls of a public restroom was insanely loud to my young ears. Not to mention, I also feared being sucked down into the toilet.

I believe I sensed the vulnerability of using a public restroom. After all, we are at our most vulnerable in the bathroom, right? We undress there; we relieve ourselves there. No one wants to be assaulted or attacked in a restroom. Such a thing would not only damage our physical bodies, but also our own sense of dignity. Most people feel it; at least I know men do. Hence, the unspoken rules of using a men’s restroom: don’t talk and, for the love of God, don’t stand next to a man unless all other urinals and stalls are otherwise occupied.

These feelings are more than likely a holdover from the early years of the human race, when “using the restroom” gave a predator the opportunity to attack us.

As for me, I still use a stall whenever possible, and I love restrooms that have room for only one person and have a door that locks.

My three-year-old mind did not want to use the restroom, mostly out of fear for my own safety. In conjunction with a difficult potty-training, I believe I came to the conclusion, logical for a three-year-old, that going back to diapers would be the best solution to my fears and to the whole ordeal of potty-training. Of course, my young mind didn’t take into account the expense and trail such a decision would be. I just wanted the fear and punishments and the shame to stop.

Well, they didn’t. I did eventually learn to use the restroom; however, accidents did continue. Not wetting accidents, messing accidents. Again, I feared to use the restroom for a bowel movement. Not until I could get home. The problem was that I sometimes didn’t make it home.

Obviously, this created some embarrassing moments for me while growing up. Now, coupled with my fears of using the restroom, I began to fear accidents. Fearing I might have an accident, my mind became focused on the functionings of my body, almost obsessed with it. And this was no laughing matter.

I remember a time in elementary when this fear and obsession was fully expressed. It’s a memory that has always stuck out in my mind.

My class was being lead to the cafeteria for lunch. I think I was in the fourth or fifth grade, probably the fifth. My friends and I were talking and having a good time waiting for our turn when one of them cried out, “Dude! Did you pee on the floor?!”

Now, it should be mentioned here that I’ve never been very good with recognizing a playful joke. I guess I’m a bit like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory in that respect, although having his intelligence would not be something I’d be opposed to. I generally take people at their word.

So, I looked down, and to my horror saw a puddle of yellowish liquid on the floor. Shame, embarrassment, and fear started to overwhelm me. Did I truly do that without knowing? The answer, of course, was no.

My own insecurity was so strong that it overrode logic. My pants weren’t wet, so there was no way that that puddle could’ve been produced by me. Also, the puddle was orangish in color upon closer inspection. It was orange juice, not urine.

Once I realized my friend was just joking around, I felt better. But the feelings of insecurity were still there, repressed, unexplored, unfulfilled.

As the years went by, my mind started to become obsessed with the idea of diapers. I wanted them, craved them, and in my adolescent years, desired them. All that fear and shame I’d associated with my bodily functions, my desire for security and safety, my burgeoning sexuality, all merged together to form a fetish around diapers, causing a complex web of emotions and desires. Diapers, and being treated like a baby, became the symbol for everything my id wanted. In diapers, the wishes of my younger self and my own sexual desires finally found a pathway for the expression of my fears, insecurities, and sexual desires.

These desires began to emerge in my discomfort and arousal whenever I came across an advertisement for diapers, in print or on television. I was intrigued and disturbed by my reaction. However, despite being disturbed, I started to do various things to satiate my desires.

Most of us have been there. I fashioned make-believe diapers out of whatever I could: wearing multiple pairs of underwear, using towels, filling my underwear with toilet paper to provide that “padded” feeling, putting a pillow between my legs, anything I could to simulate that feeling of wearing a diaper.

But it wasn’t enough. It never is, right? I wanted the real thing, and I was thrilled when I was able to purchase my very own diapers, though admittedly terrified at the same time.

I don’t recall my very first time purchasing diapers, but I believe I bought baby diapers, foolishly thinking they’d fit me. They did not, and while I loved feeling them between my legs. They were not enough. I needed something that would allow me to experience being a baby again, something that would allow me to wet myself without making a mess.

The first diapers I bought that truly fit were Goodnites. They weren’t exactly what I craved, but they fit and I could wet in them, so long as I was careful. The first time I just let it all go and found Goodnites unable to take a full bladder. Goodnites served as my diapers for the time being. I wore them when at home alone, and I even wore them to bed at night. I love waking up in a diaper. It’s the most relaxing, restful sleep I’ve ever experienced.

Obviously, these diaper experiences also coincided with my first experiences with masturbation. The best orgasms I’ve experienced—even to this day—have involved diapers. Since diapers symbolized both infantile and sexual desires, I believe the orgasms were more potent, more powerful, because I experience both psychological and sexual release when diapers are involved. The feeling is compounded in a way that cannot be duplicated with another man, at least not by the man alone, which I do find a bit saddening. I would love for a man to be able to satisfy me solely by himself, but unfortunately that is not possible. And at thirty, I don’t think it will ever be possible.

The foundations of my psyche have been set, allowing for the formation of a psychological makeup that is irreversible. However, the expression of infantile and sexual desires can be managed in a healthy way. I believe that so long as the expression of our ABDL tendencies does not exclude the development of healthy relationships then there’s no harm in delving into the truly fascinating world that is ABDL.

The mind is a funny place, no?