I sometimes think that sex acts as a barometer in a relationship, particularly when that relationship is headed towards going tits up because it’s lost intimacy and stopped meeting important needs for one or both people in it.

Your situation, as I read it, is unbelievably common - if I weren’t such a lazy fuck I’d link to a diagram from a longitudinal relationship satisfaction study, but you’ll have to take my word for it that most are moderate-high, until they have a baby; levels then spend a year plummeting to very low satisfaction. If the couple stays together their mutuel levels of satisfaction steadily rises until it returns to moderate-highly satisfying... in about 18ish years. It also comes with an additional dimension of depth, which I haven’t seen quantified (because I haven’t looked 🤷🏻‍♀️).

If you want to help me test out a theory, (which you totally should because then it’s for science, which is a noble cause 😉): look into what options are available to you to for relationship and/or couples sex therapies are available to you. Then talk to your wife about what you’ve found, and explain why you began looking for help - because you realised your connection is slipping away and you take that seriously enough to do something about it. That fact is far more important than details of the sexual fantasies currently filling in that void for you. And if I’m right about that, then your wandering eyes/heart may look like they’re about sex, but really both are a result of a more intimate dissatisfaction you’re experiencing. Intimacy is built with vulnerability and acceptance, but getting around to those conversations started when you’re each trying to survive parenting and working? Hella hard and unrealistic for tons of couples to fix on their own.

If you want to try something before you call it quits, make it couple’s counselling. Find a sex+/fetish+ one if you want to talk about sex more openly.

What y’all are kink shaming up there is called “Death Feedism”, and sits at the far end of aeveral feedism sub-spectrums. “Feeding someone to death” isn’t actually a literal thing. It’s so impractical that, by choice or not, most death feedists are just like “vanilla” feedists, (not hating because I am one!), but without any concerns about limits, and anecdotally it seems more likely fat and sex may be inextricable for them (also me).

I get that the issues of abuse and meaningful consent are easy to imagine, even for people who don’t relate. On the overall spectrum of feeding and fattening, I’m pretty sure we can agree that the, “fed beyond immobility by dominant feeder” end is the most extreme of all the feeder sub-spectrums.

My dad was given a terminal cancer diagnosis with 12-18 months to live. Grim, I know, but this happened when I was at my thinnest adult weight (an athletic 185/size 14 US) and had ended a sexless joke of a non-“relationship” relationship just hours before that bombshell dropped.

I’d toyed around with the idea of gaining since I discovered feedism and put a name to why the thought of growing a belly hang made me cum so freaking hard. But up until that day I pictured myself finding an FA but keeping my fetish to myself, in fantasy only except for being fiercely body positive and secretly enjoying any accidental gains I might have.

What a halfhearted waste of a life experience mine would have been if I’d never had that existential slap in the face, or one that came with the freedom of starting over in a new country, and also a built in excuse to explain away the kind of weight gain that makes loved ones gossip and debate whether they should intervene; I moved overseas to help my birth dad die - of course I was going to “comfort eat” my way through it all!

So, yeah, TL;DR is I once had a mortality-based epiphany that made me gain 150 lbs 🤣

I get the same cue every time I gain more than 5+ lbs.!

First, my thighs feel more tightly squished together, particularly on the upper back half of them.

Soon after, my butt starts feeling noticeably heavier and with that my lower back muscles will get sore from effort if I walk or stand for too long. It’s the muscle group at the top of my butt where it meets my back, and my recent gain up to 330 means just standing can feel like powerlifting!

[quote]AskDrFeeder:
Can you think of any more? Which one are you?

2. Stage by stage -- you gain a certain amount and then re-evaluate, possibly stopping, possibly gaining more.

I started with an initial goal in mind of 265 lbs. because in my fantasies that was the number that correlated with the features I wanted my fat body to have, most of all being a belly hang. I was also comfortable enough with the thought of potentially one day actually being 265 lbs that I was free from any reality-based anxiety getting between me getting off to it.

I hit 265 in the summer of 2016, and I now currently weigh between 325-330. Every extra pound has been wanted and intentional, usually gained in 10-15lb increments over 3-5 months (when the stars of will, ability, and body fat cooperation all align). So yeah, 100% a 2!

Statistically speaking, gaining weight is more likely to show up with co-occurring health issues than smoking weed, and more so with non-smokable marijuana products (edibles, tinctures, etc.). Fun fact: Weed is safer than paracetamol.

I call it “my herbal appetite stimulant” 🤣

Here’s my “origin story” - I hope it helps!

So just for context I’ve been “fatsexual” for as long as I can remember and used to secretly stuff my clothes as a kid, and have always gotten off hardest to me fattening up. I didn’t learn about feedism until I was at university so that’s when I started grappling with my desires vs. my real life. I was in a long term relationship with a dietician (a body positive one, at least!), and quite frankly the idea of intentionally going down that path scared the shit out of me. I tried redirecting my link towards feeding other women but it was an inadequate substitute.

After I split up with the dietician I got on some bbw dating sites and was approached by a feeder (who made himself known by calling me “too thin” in his first message - not a bad tactic btw!). We wound up speaking by phone a few times due to distance, and after a few chats my gut was saying “hell no!”, so I told him I wasn’t ready.

I spent several years in a kind of functional no man’s land between my fantasies and my active lifestyle. I was never thin, usually a small bbw, and I was happy that way. I’ve only ever dated FA’s and gave up on overt dieting in my early 20’s, but exercised fairly regularly and ate pretty healthily (I only see it that way now though). But there was always this unmet need to be adored for my obesity and gluttony by someone who wanted to fatten me just as much as I did.

Then my world got hectic with multiple moves and frequent travelling for work. I’ve kearned I only lose weight accidentally when either locked into my type A professional asskicking mode, or when I’m sad / anxious / neurochemically askew.

I got below 200 lbs for the first time in a decade, and while it was a totally interesting experience to be a size 14 (with a cracking set of legs, to my surprise!), my enjoyment of it was mostly limited to being able to shop at so many clothing stores and walk a fair distance without burning the skin off my inner thighs.
I got a lot more attention from men then, but I was only bemused by it at best most of the time. Who cares if someone is attracted to a version of you that is nothing more than a side effect of stress and unpleasantness?

All in all it took getting “thin” for me to start realising how much fat was already a part of my identity. I also knew the weight loss wouldn’t stick and had no intention of trying to make it. In hindsight I think that comfortably inevitable weight gain played a big role in getting me to the “fuck it, it’s time” moment.

That moment came after a week where my job flamed out, I dumped the loser I’d let glom onto me, I moved my grandma into assisted living, and finally... got the news that my biological father, who I was very close with, had terminal cancer and 18 months to live. That was a couple weeks before thanksgiving, and in that time I decided I’d go to England where he was being treated and would help him as he exited this mortal coil.

Getting that news forced a real carpe diem moment in me, and just as my gut said no to that feeder guy, it said “Yes!!” to having a test run at gaining weight. Both before and during that run I spent a lot of time thinking and feeling my way through it. While I fully intended on letting others think my gain was because of emotional eating, I didn’t want to realise later that I’d been using my kink as if it were a drug to escape and avoid emotional pain. My love for lady fat is one of the purest, happiest desires I have, and I didn’t want to fuck it up by taking it too far and regretting what I’d done. The truth is that acting out any fantasy will have an element of escapism to it, and that wound up being okay for me.

So I started off with a 10 day “gain as much as I can” food bender. I gained 18 lbs. it was EPIC! Then I left it mostly alone while I moved overseas. After the bender I began setting semi-short term weight goals for whatever number felt equally comfortable as it did a rousing to me, usually 10-20lbs at a time. Despite hot furiously I gained at first, I always took time between goals to #1- fully enjoy my progress! #2- check in with myself on all fronts so I could be sure I knew what I wanted and where I stood. I knew if I didn’t listen to my (ever increasing) gut instincts it could all go sour. I didn’t let anyone feed me for several years because I knew how easy it’d be for me to lose myself if I developed feelings for a feedee, and this needed to be *my* thing for only me!

And you know what? It all worked out beautifully ? it turns out that all that introspection was also building up my inner fortitude and self-assuredness. Those are handy things to have when you’re

Well this totally nailed it on the head for me. The first couple times I allowed myself to gain a few pounds felt exactly the same as what you described, until one day, several years down that road I decided to go for it. I haven’t had anxiety about any of the weight I’ve gained since then. I went from under 200 to over 300 and may gain more still, but every step of the way I’ve done it in whatever increments have felt beat to me at those times.

I have to add that the fringe benefits of having learned to listen to myself through those years and now have been insanely immeasurably good for me! Along with 100 lbs I also gained a huge amount of inner strength and fortitude, and I got to get fat with conviction and that has made everything both easier and more enjoyable than I ever had imagined.

Best of luck on your journey, whichever way it takes you!

I can relate! Though I don’t describe my experience as “growing out of it”, because for me it was about how my fetish expressed itself (and fuck it’s weird referring to a fetish in the third person! But too lazy to edit).

I thought I had a pregnancy kink when I was on my teens, that I realised later was actually a feedee fetish. I call it a fetishise because it’s pretty much integral to my sexuality, and has been since I discovered feedism and the *kaching!* moment happened for me.

But prior to that all I knew was that I got off on the thought of my belly growing, and the idea of intentionally gaining weight was so far fetched it never occurred to me - I was in and out of an eating disorder at the time ffs! (And oh how things do change! Lol). The pregnancy thoughts were just the most accessible, and they were weird to me but comparatively non-threatening. After my “ah-ha” moment (thanks to good old yahoo groups! Amiright, old schoolers? 😉👍🏼, I still struggled to come to terms with what I had learned about myself. I tried to carry on the preggo-based fantasies at times and eventually got zero satisfaction from them, and still don’t.

Not sure how relevant it is, if at all, but I did the clothes stuffing thing as a kid too 🤷🏻‍♀️