Telling Relatives

From ADISC Answers Wiki

It is natural to want to tell someone about your new discovery when searching about yourself. But a topic like infantilism isn't widely known and different people will react in different ways. The day you wish to tell someone could have a big impact on you and your friends and/or relatives. This is considered a gamble as it could go either well where you are accepted for who you are or badly and be bullied for being seen as a 'freak'. Preparation is key to ensure most of it goes OK. Remember, this is just a general guide, in the end it's up to you to decide how you tell your family.

Why do You Want To Tell?

The safest option is not to tell anyone as it avoids all disappointment and misery if the outcome wasn't as you had hoped. So unless it is necessary, it is discouraged for you to tell anyone. You will only have one shot at this, so don't get too dizzy over the excitement and take your time to calm down and think about what you plan to do.

Firstly ask yourself:

1. Are you ready?
2. Do you really want them to know?
3. Do you have enough trust in them?
4. Why do you want to tell them?

The answers varies from person to person. So there is no right or wrong answer. This is a decision you ultimately make yourself.

Are you ready?

You might of only found out about infantilism yesterday, or you may have known about it for years. Typically teenagers go through phases where things become interesting, then over time the feeling dies off. So if you are new to the game or not 100% certain you are an infantilist or similar, then time is the only solution here. Give it a few weeks, months, maybe even years until you are comfortable with the idea that you accept yourself as an infantilist. It's going to be pretty hard to convince other people to accept you if you can't deal with the idea yourself.

Do you really want them to know?

It is important that you are sure that you want them to know, you need to be certain. When someone discovers their own *Bism, it can be common for them to get a compelling urge to tell other people, possibly caused by the initial excitement of discovering other *Bs. Take time to think things through: do you really want them to know, or do you just want get a secret off your chest?

Do you have enough trust in them?

Since infantilism is a sensitive issue trust is a key component between the communication of yourself and your friend/relative. The worst case scenario is that your friend/relative will be using this information against you and spread rumors, which we all do not want.

You also want to ensure that after the talk that you are still friends and/or still loved by your parents. Since after the news you do not wanted to be befriended or be acted towards differently affecting your relationship in a negative way.

Why do you want to tell them?

Is there any benefit from telling them? The reality is that your parents are not going to baby you and buy you diapers; far from it! So if that is your idea, you are sadly mistaken.

This is more personal and varies from person to person. But it could be there self esteem would be improved if they were supported, but then again this could backfire. Have you been 'caught' and your friends/relatives have been behaving differently. Then you may feel it is necessary to stop the confusion and pain that you and your parents/relatives are feeling.

Only you know the time is right.

If you are ready to tell your friends and believe you have enough trust in them, then go for it.

Preparation

For this to go as smooth as possible it is best to arm yourself with a bit of knowledge. Parents/friends are inevitably going to ask you questions. So having the answers ready will make it easier for yourself and your friend/relative to understand and avoid any confusion or possible conflicts. Typical questions they might ask:

• Does it involve children? or Is it illegal?
• Isn't it unhygienic?

There is no foolproof way to know what questions they will ask. But look on the bright side, not only are they learning from you but you can learn from them equally as well by how they are responding. There is plenty of websites out there devoted to help answer these questions and give guidance and support to friends/relatives who have been told about infantilism.

Some question you may have to make a white lie about. This is in the interest of both your own as well your friend/partner. This is mainly to avoid any assumptions or stereotypical views that maybe created.

What to Avoid

It is important to have a good impression of yourself and to prevent damage to that there are a few key point that you may consider to avoid. As you only can do this once and you don't want to screw it up.

Firstly and most importantly, avoid the sexual stuff if possible. This may not apply to you, but avoid bring up the fact that "Diapers (don't) turn me on". Your friend or relative will most likely think you of a pervert and maybe see you as a pedophile. If your friend/relative does bring it up, don't panic! It is possible that they will ask it. This is where you should of prepared you self and reply with a simple "no" if you feel the need to 'white lie'.

Also avoid talking about online communities such as ADISC, especially to your parents. They will likely worry about your safety with you conversing with strangers with similar interests. And f you spend a fair bit of time online, they may start to apply restrictions to your usage or may even ban it all together. You don't want to make yourself look like a bad person.

Conversation Starting

Best way to start the conversation is to have a way to start with sexual stuff, then maybe to move on to fetishes. At this point if you feel uncomfortable, then say nothing. Other then that, go for it.

Laugh about it if you need to and maybe a few jokes just to lighten things up a little. They may tell you their fetish.

Boyfriends/Girlfriends

Telling your boyfriend/girlfriend can have an impact on the relationship. But DON'T expect them to buy you diapers. Some girls are not into role-playing and therefore don't push them into it.

Yawgmoth's Theory on Telling Others

I figure this "study" of mine may be something I want archived under my name here in the wiki. So I'm quoting directly from the original thread it was posted in. If you're interested in the context behind the thread, you can find that here.

Anyway, to the "study"...

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Disclaimer: Despite the content of this article Yawgmoth does not actually endorse or support actually telling anyone about your fetishes. It is the author's paranoid belief that, regardless of the above supporting data, that it would be foolish to tell someone such sensitive information for reasons that are too many to list. Yawgmoth claims no responsibility for any lives ruined or damaged by telling someone your fetish(s).

This topic actually reminds me of a topic of conversation that I was discussing among my friends in the community. The topic stemmed from a friend of mine, which I’ve known in the community for several years now, telling me that he is considering telling his girlfriend about this little “pastime”. So the question raised was: What is the likelihood of her receiving it well vs. receiving it negatively?

So with the question raised, I contemplated over it for a few hours and consulted the opinions of several other friends on my “Community” Buddy-List. After getting several opinions, and comparing them to my own, I came up with a theory. “A person’s response to finding out fetish information is directly related to how they found out about it.” Allow me to explain…

My community friend, let’s call him John for simplicity sake, has told two people about this fetish in his lifetime. Each time he’s told someone he did so in a level headed, reasonable, fashion within conversational context (Note: “conversational context” means that him and his lady friend were already talking about intimate things, such as what “turns them on”). Not surprisingly, both girls that he’s told received it well, with acceptance, and even were curious enough to ask more questions about it. To this day John has no reported negative consequences from telling them.

While asking another friend about this topic, let’s call him Mike, I was told his story of telling friends. Mike, being a person of incredible testicular fortitude, would occasionally wear his diapers while hanging out with his friends; at the time, the friends were ignorant of what he was wearing. Well, for some reason Mike decided one day that he’d tell his friends, and so he did. Although I don’t know what context he brought it up in, according to Mike the friends took it well and were not disturbed by it at all.

Throughout three more conversations similar to the two above I was unable to find a single account of someone telling friends/significant-others resulting in a negative response. The other three people I asked told similar success stories; believe it or not two of those three are females in the community, one of which told her other female friend and the other told her group of male friends. It is my theory, from the above observations, that when you personally tell someone that it subconsciously gets interpreted that you have no shame over it. If you convey no embarrassment, shame, discomfort, etc…about doing something then the individual(s) that you told has nothing to think negatively of you about.

On the other hand, take a typical crappy diaper story where some teenager wears diapers for some reason, tries to hide it, and gets caught. When people see someone ashamed of what they’re doing, trying to hide it, then getting caught on someone else’s (other than their own) accord it’d a given that others will find fault in it and receive it in a way that you most likely won’t like. To put it simply, information that is taken rather than given is much more likely to be used as “ammo” against you.

Now keep in mind that in no way am I saying to go out and flaunt this fetish. We’ve all seen the horrific ABs on the news that go out in public dressed in the full baby outfit. There’s a line between telling someone with tact and telling the world like a bumbling idiot. Please, for the sake of everyone, don’t become someone like the folk that “represented” us on Jerry Springer. I’m just saying that if you decide to tell someone, use common sense and tact. For example, it most likely wouldn’t be too prudent to wear a used diaper while telling someone all this.

As a small update to my last post in this thread, I’d like to say that the other night I received a message from “John” informing me of a development in his current relationship with a girl. This girl, let’s call her Betty-Sue, decided that she’d indulge his fantasy for valentines day. Natural curiosity got a hold of me at this point and I inquired as to what she and him intend to do. Sadly for all of you, however, I don’t feel as though it’d be right of me to inform you all of John’s and Betty-Sue’s intimate plans. To put it short, it seems as though on Valentines Day, John will be, as he put it, “Living the dream.”

Quoted from Thread... "Totally has to be in the 100% trust level area, and still, it's all up to how she takes things that are out of the "norm" for her, watch her for a bit and see how she takes "weird-well, to her, weird" stuff and go from there."

I would like to kindly disagree with this statement. I don't believe that it's necessary to be in a "100% trust zone" to tell someone. for the reasons stated in my above post, if you tell someone with confidence and without shame then it's my conclusion (supported by reports of others) that they will respect that courage.

However, I think it's important to differentiate between being "accepted" and being "indulged"; often times people will blur, or even erase, the line between the two. In all of my "studies" very few actually end up with the person they told actually participating in this fetish's content. All of them did accept it however. It's important to draw that line distinctly, as someone's acceptance can often times dwindle away if they're being pressured to participate in it when not wanting to.