I’ve found out the reason I’m a devotee...

[Nia]

Some of u girls who know me and my threads and posts from before know all my dev history and struggles... and you probably know that like the most of you I couldn’t pin point any logical and convincing reason for my very random and specific attraction towards ether left above the knee or bilateral high above the knees amputee guys...

Fast forward to 2 months ago when my (then already) ex boyfriend ended up with the diagnosis of severe discus hernia which left him almost totally imobile at first... even though we weren’t together for a month or two already I was the first and only one he called for help so I moved back in and I was there- for everything. He was in severe pain and his LEFT leg worsening from being numb to being totally paralyzed. Between doctors and therapies I remembered that my father had an operation for the same condition back when I was only 3 years old. Just a little note, when I was little I was absolutely mesmerized by my father even childishly and naively saying that I’ll one day marry him. I knew about his back problems and the operation only from hearing stories I thought I was too young to remember. And while I was parking my car on my way back from the store to my ex boyfriend’s apartment I stayed in the car to make a call to my dad. Desperately hoping for an advice or anything of help.

He was so sorry to hear what has happened to my ex and he said that from what I’m describing he has exactly the same diagnosis. He told me that from this perspective he would think twice before going to the operation and then he told me a detail no one ever told me. Like in the movie a rain started to heavily fall and I was listening to him realizing somehow intuitively what he is about to say and I was breathless.

He told me that at one point before operation my mom and him were hugging and kissing and she started crying. He asked her what’s wrong and she said I’m stepping on your left foot with my heal and you don’t even react.... he told me that he didn’t have any feeling in his left leg and he couldn’t move it but he felt pain so severe no medicine could help. He told me he wanted to wait and give the medicine and therapy a chance but that the pain was so severe that he wanted to cut his leg of and that in the end he begged doctors to amputate it. Of course it wasn’t realistic but he was in such agony that he repeatedly begged my mom to somehow organize it for him and he was so certain that his leg amputated or not will not recover from that pain that he asked a friend to take his car (he is taxi driver) and to drive it to a mechanic to adjust it to automatic.

I was 3, in love with my dad, witnessing all this agony in one room apartment we lived in my little brain couldn’t cope with the picture of my hero dad without one leg and what the poor thing did- made it sexual for me....

I was crying a river but I of course camuflaged it but I knew for sure that’s it...

I don’t know how to cope with it or if I’m better or worse now

Just needed to share here

[ayla]

Wow this was a powerful read, thank you for sharing!

[mili]

Powerful... wow. I wanna give your 3 year old self a hug. <3 Some interesting coincidences and correlations there and those confusing feelings make sense with the profound realization. Thanks so much for sharing! I might be the minority here, but I do believe that devoteeism in part stems from impactful childhood experiences like this—ones that not all of us remember. Feel free to reach out if you need to talk more!

[Nia]

Mar 30, 2021 22:35:27 GMT -5 ayla said:

Wow this was a powerful read, thank you for sharing!

Thanks so much for reading and replying:-*

[Nia]

Mar 30, 2021 23:23:10 GMT -5 mili said:

Powerful... wow. I wanna give your 3 year old self a hug. <3 Some interesting coincidences and correlations there and those confusing feelings make sense with the profound realization. Thanks so much for sharing! I might be the minority here, but I do believe that devoteeism in part stems from impactful childhood experiences like this—ones that not all of us remember. Feel free to reach out if you need to talk more!

Thank you so much. I think that you are absolutely right. My therapist told me couple of years back and I shared here that one of the ways for a fetish (even though I don’t think devoteism is fetish) to develop is from a childhood trauma so severe that a brain couldn’t cope so it sexualized it instead. I liked that explanation but I thought I didn’t have any experience in my own childhood that could justify....

And yes you are right so many coincidences... to the point that I wouldn’t be mad if someone wouldn’t believe but I swear it’s like I described down to each detail.... it’s completely another story how quilty I feel for what my ex is going through... I know it’s not me but just a stupid coincidence but it doesn’t help much...

[ayla]

I think it’s helpful to remember that ALL people develop sexual triggers (what we will later find arousing) between the ages of 3-7. Our orientations are fixed but the specific things we find sexy are learned. I’m sure that applies to us devs as well!

My best guess on my own devness is that I was a precocious kid, a sensitive oddball that didn’t fit in. I saw that out-of-place experience reflected in disability and was fascinated by the sense of “difference” being visible instead of invisible. Now, seeing the eroticism in the disabled body and how it navigates the world differently, I’m in a way communicating to that part of me that wanted to be seen and loved “not despite but because.” I don’t think it’s as simple as just that but that’s as close to an origin story as I’ve yet been able to uncover.

[em]

Mar 31, 2021 10:10:32 GMT -5 Nia said:

Mar 30, 2021 23:23:10 GMT -5 mili said:

Powerful... wow. I wanna give your 3 year old self a hug. <3 Some interesting coincidences and correlations there and those confusing feelings make sense with the profound realization. Thanks so much for sharing! I might be the minority here, but I do believe that devoteeism in part stems from impactful childhood experiences like this—ones that not all of us remember. Feel free to reach out if you need to talk more!

Thank you so much. I think that you are absolutely right. My therapist told me couple of years back and I shared here that one of the ways for a fetish (even though I don’t think devoteism is fetish) to develop is from a childhood trauma so severe that a brain couldn’t cope so it sexualized it instead. I liked that explanation but I thought I didn’t have any experience in my own childhood that could justify....

And yes you are right so many coincidences... to the point that I wouldn’t be mad if someone wouldn’t believe but I swear it’s like I described down to each detail.... it’s completely another story how quilty I feel for what my ex is going through... I know it’s not me but just a stupid coincidence but it doesn’t help much...

Wow, that's really interesting, I didn't know that there could be a link between sexualisation and trauma....
thank you for sharing such a personal story, I'm sure we all try to find these connections is our past, so maybe it'll bring you some peace to have found it. The good thing is that you are not alone in these feelings xx

[em]

Mar 31, 2021 10:37:00 GMT -5 ayla said:

I think it’s helpful to remember that ALL people develop sexual triggers (what we will later find arousing) between the ages of 3-7. Our orientations are fixed but the specific things we find sexy are learned. I’m sure that applies to us devs as well!

My best guess on my own devness is that I was a precocious kid, a sensitive oddball that didn’t fit in. I saw that out-of-place experience reflected in disability and was fascinated by the sense of “difference” being visible instead of invisible. Now, seeing the eroticism in the disabled body and how it navigates the world differently, I’m in a way communicating to that part of me that wanted to be seen and loved “not despite but because.” I don’t think it’s as simple as just that but that’s as close to an origin story as I’ve yet been able to uncover.

omg I think I feel something similar actually! In all my fantasies, it's usually about the disabled guy being an "outcast", or really even a non-disabled guy who is a bit of an outcast for some social or personal reason, and needs someone to see "the real him" and appreciate and accept him...  I think we had similar childhood experiences, really interesting to see someone who shares these patterns!

(Sorry for hijacking the thread Nia!)

[ayla]

Mar 31, 2021 12:44:02 GMT -5 em said:

Mar 31, 2021 10:37:00 GMT -5 ayla said:

I think it’s helpful to remember that ALL people develop sexual triggers (what we will later find arousing) between the ages of 3-7. Our orientations are fixed but the specific things we find sexy are learned. I’m sure that applies to us devs as well!

My best guess on my own devness is that I was a precocious kid, a sensitive oddball that didn’t fit in. I saw that out-of-place experience reflected in disability and was fascinated by the sense of “difference” being visible instead of invisible. Now, seeing the eroticism in the disabled body and how it navigates the world differently, I’m in a way communicating to that part of me that wanted to be seen and loved “not despite but because.” I don’t think it’s as simple as just that but that’s as close to an origin story as I’ve yet been able to uncover.

omg I think I feel something similar actually! In all my fantasies, it's usually about the disabled guy being an "outcast", or really even a non-disabled guy who is a bit of an outcast for some social or personal reason, and needs someone to see "the real him" and appreciate and accept him...  I think we had similar childhood experiences, really interesting to see someone who shares these patterns!

(Sorry for hijacking the thread Nia!)

Interesting, now for me it’s on mainly a physical level. I’m not especially interested in someone being a social black sheep or not. Ideally he does not need me to “fix him” or provide something otherwise unattainable. To me a wheeler is just physically sexy. In fact I still struggle to accept that this isn’t the mainstream view bc to me it feels so natural and obvious, not the result of empathy or thinking we might share an experience of being “outcasts.” I just think that might have been how it got STARTED.

(Double apology for hijacking...)

[Nia]

Mar 31, 2021 12:54:18 GMT -5 ayla said:

Mar 31, 2021 12:44:02 GMT -5 em said:

omg I think I feel something similar actually! In all my fantasies, it's usually about the disabled guy being an "outcast", or really even a non-disabled guy who is a bit of an outcast for some social or personal reason, and needs someone to see "the real him" and appreciate and accept him...  I think we had similar childhood experiences, really interesting to see someone who shares these patterns!

(Sorry for hijacking the thread Nia!)

Interesting, now for me it’s on mainly a physical level. I’m not especially interested in someone being a social black sheep or not. Ideally he does not need me to “fix him” or provide something otherwise unattainable. To me a wheeler is just physically sexy. In fact I still struggle to accept that this isn’t the mainstream view bc to me it feels so natural and obvious, not the result of empathy or thinking we might share an experience of being “outcasts.” I just think that might have been how it got STARTED.

(Double apology for hijacking...)

Please do hijack I’m glad you guys can get some of this and you aren’t really hijacking since it’s all on the topic. It’s interesting how you say for you it’s purely physical. For me it’s a mix of both and both aspects are very strong. Which now again is not very logical if I’m dev because of the childhood thing. For me it’s super physical because I find legless male bodies extremely beautiful and attractive. I love single AK amputees because I find lack of symmetry insanely sexy but also I’m equally if not even more attracted to bilateral high AK amputees. I find everything about them beyond perfect- how they look, how they move everything. But also for me hand in hand with physical attraction comes “the story” about how adult AB guy acquired disability, how he coped, adopted, reinvented himself practically and beyond everything how he found his way of doing everything just in another, new way. It’s mesmerizing if you think about it. Human kind took tens of thousands of years just to stand up from all 4 and to start walking and those guys figure their own “walk” or way of getting around in just a couple of years... and there are no 2 PWDs who do the things exactly in the same manner, it’s specific for everyone just like each injury has it’s specfics. I’m kinda obsessed by that and I’m indefinitely turned on by my own inability to fully understand the brain process of a guy who went through something like that. No matter how close I became with a guy he remains a mystery and I feel like it’s something only PWDs with acquired injuries share and like it’s some knowledge unavailable to us “civilians”. And to me as a dev that’s what’s making them so hot, so out of this world so above everything so impossible to compare with any AB person. So, you can somehow explain this dramatic attraction towards the “making of the PWD” however cruel it sounds but how and how my esthetic made such a turn that amputees are the only body shape that my mind recognizes as sexually attractive... beats me....

[em]

Yeah maybe it's not fixing, more like reassuring a vulnerable person... Which is not always healthy in real life but I find that I seek that out also with an AB partner. So yeah, for me it's also not just physical I'd say, but I don't have any guesses as to what could have caused my devness (edit: I mean whether any particular experience caused my particular preference)

[ayla]

Mar 31, 2021 15:56:05 GMT -5 Nia said:

... how he found his way of doing everything just in another, new way. It’s mesmerizing if you think about it. Human kind took tens of thousands of years just to stand up from all 4 and to start walking and those guys figure their own “walk” or way of getting around in just a couple of years... and there are no 2 PWDs who do the things exactly in the same manner, it’s specific for everyone just like each injury has it’s specfics....

So much this! I absolutely love watching people move through the world in a unique way. Mesmerizing is exactly the right word — I’m interested even when I’m not attracted. And when it’s a handsome man doing so? With skill and confidence? 🤯 The sexiness is off the charts for me!