Do you let someone around know about you dev feelings?

[koala]

Oct 8, 2021 10:43:20 GMT -5 Eliza said:

It's good that we have a space on the internet to talk about the topic openly.

This is so true! I am extremely thankful for this wonderful community and the acceptance and safety that it offers. I know a lot of people lurk on the site for months or years before actually signing up. I, on the other hand, leapt for joy when I found it. I immediately signed up and started posting all over the place. Keeping this secret was eating away at me, and I desperately needed a place where I could feel heard and understood without the fear of being judged. Reading everyone else's experiences and thoughts was like getting a glimpse into my own childhood and psyche, and I finally, for the first time in my life, was able to release the burden. I don't know that I'll ever get to the point of talking about it to anyone I know in real life, but for now this is good enough.

[rebeckers84]

I started with a couple of my very close friends. I just couldn't have going on a podcast be the first time that I actually spoke my entire truth to someone. All my friends, 5 in total, honestly didn't bat an eye. They had a lot of questions. Good curious questions. Nothing that made me feel demeaned in any way. Much like Ayala, they were kinda like why were you so afraid or hesitant to tell us.

I have 2 more friends that I feel like I need to bring into this circle now too. They've gotten a lot more involved in my life the past year and we talk about the boys I'm seeing alllll the time and I just don't want to hide the wheelchair part of my stories anymore from them. I'm taking a little girls weekend with one this weekend so I think I will probably tell her.

At the end of the day I think you have to do what feels best to you. I didn't start telling anyone until I was 36 years old. I sat with my truth for 20+ years not telling anyone. I'm still not shouting it from the rafters, but when it feels right, do it.

[blueskye101]

My ex husband knows. He seemed a bit confused but just said “ everyone has something” His happened to be much younger men
I think my youngest son knows what kind of romance writing I like and teases me about it occasionally but that’s about all. As said above, I’m from an age where no internet and sex quite private. My sister and I do not share stories about our love lives. I’m so thankful to have this community to share with. Life saver. Especially since I was nearly 50 by time I figured out this was even a thing. My family and friends DO know I have had encounters with a couple guys and knows one is in wheelchair but did not tell them details about the other that I still am in contact with. Besides being really embarrassing about how young he is gahhh

[sheene]

I’ve known I’m a dev for other 10 years and I’ve still only told 2 close friends. Both times I was drunk but they were both non judgmental.

[feelsunshine]

I told some friends step by step and also told my mother.
No one judged. Most didn’t even ask further questions. Just accepted it and we basically went on with other topics. And my mothers answer was in a very nice way something like: it’s your life, your choice, I want you to be happy.
I was upright(from the very beginning) with my guy who’s in a wheelchair and he was totally easy going with it. Actually I guess he was even happy to have found a dev, even though he wasn’t aware that something like devs existed. I think he said something like that it feels nice for him to explore sexuality with a dev, where he knows he doesn’t have to be ashamed of anything.
But in every case, I think it makes a lot of difference in how much time and effort you spend and how you tell people. Don’t just jump on them. For everyone I spent a lot of time to also explain backgrounds, such as explaining how it feels like to me.
Some steps in the explanation are
- the comparison to hair color. Some like blonde, some like brunette.. same here, some like pedestrians, others like ppl in wheelchair.
-it’s not just the wheelchair. Other stuff still applies: character, is he decent-looking (and I don’t mean model! Everyone has their very own sense of what beauty is to them!)
-I am not fetished in caregiving, nor do I feel pleasure in the fact that he’s weaker or “can do less” - I want and need a guy who’s independent and the less help the guy needs, the better.

The fact that everyone I told was not judgemental, helped me a lot to gain self confidence in the fact of being a dev.

[ayla]

[mention]feelsunshine [/mention] those are great steps in the explanation. I usually liken it to body type — some people like big & buff, some like skinny/lanky, some like a dad bod/chubby look, etc. I find people typically understand this bc their own feelings about their partners’ bodies are usually stronger than their feelings about hair color. Race is a decent comparison in theory but it can very quickly get messy/bring up issues of stereotyping and bigotry. For better or worse, we as a society seem to have no trouble accepting that body type preferences are fairly innate and they are very commonplace.

[SouthernCalGal]

Eliza, I shared with 2 people about 37 years ago.  Then I shared with my best friend about 3 years ago.  Fast forward, about a year ago, I pretty much told everybody who is important in my life.  I figured it is so much a part of me, who I am that it was time. I was nervous and scared but it was such a relief!  I credit being able to share my feelings here with giving me the courage to share to my circle of important people.

[freya123]

Oct 8, 2021 10:43:20 GMT -5 Eliza said:

Oct 7, 2021 22:25:21 GMT -5 koala said:

I have never told anyone. Sometimes, I feel like I want to just because I want to have someone that I can be my true authentic self around, but I'm so afraid of judgment. It took me a long time to understand and accept that piece of myself, so I have a hard time comprehending how anyone else possibly could. I grew up around a lot of judgemental people, and that had hugely impacted the types of personal things I feel comfortable sharing with others. It gets lonely at times not having anyone who really knows you at the deepest level, but I still just can't seem to shake the fear. Hopefully someday.

Growing up surrounded by judgment is hard.
It's good that we have a space on the internet to talk about the topic openly.

I agree with this!

[ichbin]

I never told anyone until I was 33. Then I found PD. I immediately made an account and shared how excited I am to find so many like-minded women.

Then I was at a pool with my best friend. There was a paraplegic guy in a wheelchair with his wife and child. I thought: "NOW! Do it now. Tell her! It will be a big relief when you tell her!" 

It was so f***g hard and for minutes I kept humming and hawing.... And then I finally said it.
She was like: "And that's it? That's not bad / upsetting / evil (in German "arg") at all! Every pot needs his lid."
It was such a relief...

So, because of this good experience, I also told another very long and very good friend of mine. She however was a little weird about it. She said, in her social work there are also children who pretend with crutches and she thinks they just want attention and stuff.... I thought "wow, you are very judging", and I thought "maybe these children are Devs just like me - I also pretended as a child." But I was tired of explaining and "defending" myself.

This second experience of telling someone made me again stop talking about it and so another 9 years passed until things changed.

Just recently I told another very close girlfriend and many, many others: I told an ex boyfriend, I told three women with whom I am in a training with (NLP), I talked about it in front of 12 women in another training (for systemic coaching).

What I am most keeping away from is to talk about it to my sisters or mother - because I fear that they are judgmental and I don't even want to listen to what they have to say. But, also, there's no need for me to tell them. I don't feel they need to know. (but I probably would want them to know when I have a partner who is paraplegic)

Also, I fear about opening up in front of men with disability who got to know me in another context. I am scared that they will have strange thoughts about me or like me less when they get to know. I don't want them to think that I want to be around them because I "use them as a fetish" or something, which, of course is not the case ... but I have heard so many stories that there are PWD who fear Devs because of that stigma.

[Dani]

ichbin I am curious about your experience telling 12 women publicly. How did the topic of being a dev relate to the training and how did these women react?

[ayla]

Oct 12, 2021 20:00:45 GMT -5 rebeckers84 said:

I have 2 more friends that I feel like I need to bring into this circle now too. They've gotten a lot more involved in my life the past year and we talk about the boys I'm seeing alllll the time and I just don't want to hide the wheelchair part of my stories anymore from them. I'm taking a little girls weekend with one this weekend so I think I will probably tell her.

Would love an update on how this went…

[ichbin]

Apr 24, 2022 17:39:24 GMT -5 Dani said:

ichbin I am curious about your experience telling 12 women publicly. How did the topic of being a dev relate to the training and how did these women react?

The training is about systemic constellations. It works like this: one person tells about his or her struggle with something either in the outer world or in the inside world. Basically it turns out that any problem is an inside problem because the outer world we often cannot change (how other people act or certain circumstances). So it's about how I look at it and how it makes me feel.

The inner parts are being represented by people. I'll give you an example. Let's say Julia has problems with Fear and Anger.
We then make a constellation with: Focus, Fear and Anger. These three are represented by people (which Julia choses). She leads first the Focus in the room, and then Fear and Anger. Just by looking at the constellation a lot gets clear (e.g. Anger is very close to her or Fear is immediately in front of her so she always has to stare at it...)

 "Focus" is the representing person for "Julias view on this certain topic". So it's not the whole person, Julia as such, but only Julia as she sees ans senses and feels regarding to this certain topic.

So how it would work is that Julia goes infront to the person leading the training, sits down and talks about her problem. We are all listening and afterwards talk about what parts we would put into the constellation. We are in the training and are learning to do systemic constellations. 

Usually - when not in the training - these talks are privately between the person with the topic and the person doing the constellation. The representatives of the inner parts know nothing about the story, they just know, they are "Fear" and "Anger" (in our above case).

---

Ok, so this is what the training is about. 

Now I will tell you about how I opened up about my devness.

I said I have an issue I would love to take a look at and whether we could do a constellation to that topic. They agreed, so I went infront and sat down next to the teacher. The other 12 women were watching and listening.

I started talking about my issue. It was about my relationship to men (in romantic partnerships) that are clearly linked to my childhood and the relationship of me and my father. So that's where I wanted to have a look at: Why do I seem to attract men who don't have time for me (workaholics), where I am always the "last on their list", who are late and give me the feeling everything's more important to them than me. It made sense to me that it stems from my childhood because my father didn't have much time or attention for me. Of course, reliving that pattern, has made me very sad but also very angry at times and I have suffered from even though wanting a different relationship to a man who loves to spend time with me and give me attention, I again ended up with a man with this pattern...

I told about how I was using a new dating site in order to find a partner and how again I am attracting men who are not into relationships - and the better I like the men, the more they don't seem to be able to fulfill this longing for a long-lasting relationship.

Well, and since this dating site is about people with and without disabilities, I digged deep into the whole topic... I said how I am attracted to paraplegic men and how that has always been the case and how I was so ashamed my whole life for it and how I can't believe I am sitting here and talking about it (my pulse was very high at that moment). But I realized, everyone was empathetic and felt my long-lasting struggle of hiding who I really was and having had fear of being judged and excluded my whole life if people really knew me... 

It was such a relief to feel this warm and empathetic atmosphere, and at that moment I didn't feel shame, it was more like a feeling being high because I could sense how great of a relief it was for me to talk about it. 

In the end, our teacher said, all that I was talking about is not really a necessary information for doing the constellation (about the "father" topic of being neglected), but it was so very important and necessary for me to talk about it in order for my shame to get less. And I was so thankful and grateful that I got the chance to do that. 

Nobody was judgmental at all, btw. I think they just were happy for me that I could finally get rid of this burden of having to hide.

[hjfundus]

About 2 weeks ago I told someone for the first time - my partner. It was really scary and there was a lot of adrenaline in my body. But he reacted beautifully. He basically said "We all have these weird kinks and parts of our sexuality, no one knows why or where they come from, they're just there." That's exactly what I wanted and needed to hear. But I think it's not such a big deal if you know the person you are telling is kink-positive, or even just curious about the world and people. There's not going to be too much judgement. So yeah, I feel I could definitely tell more people now if the time came. I assume it's like coming out about the gender(s) you are into - it gets easier every time.
Disclaimer, me and my partner actually did split up, but it was a combination of things and I don't think it was too much to do with what I told him because he also said "It doesn't change the way I feel about you, like not negative or positive. It's just a thing".

I was seeing a sexologist (for other things) a while back and I completely went against her advice of "Sometimes it's better not to tell your partner about your fantasies and keep them to yourself." However, I don't think she was the best at her job   

[apis]

The first person who knew about my devness is my bff, she was a bit surprised since she had never listened about it, but she didn't judge me at all. That gave me the confidence to confess myself to other few friends, so at this moment around six people know about it and all of them have not been judgy at all. The only thing that made me a bit upset is when, without any dev context, few of them had suggested to ask an ab man to fake... That's when I explain about pretenders and dev preferences and after that, everything is ok . I 'm so lucky!!!

[Deleted]

I was extremely hesitant to tell my friends, but one by one I shared this part of me, and they answered absolutely positive: everyone has a "kink" or a "thing" for something, why cannot it be attraction to PWD? You, girl, was nervous for no reason, we are here for you and if you want to share, share with us.
I literally cried after this warmness once.

My parents don't know, because they're too old-school for this, and I better keep it to myself in this part.