For those who have revealed to another person, your sleepy/bondage fetish, what was their very first reaction? Was it shock and awe, were they freaked out, did they become lifelong buddies with you? I've had some interesting results.

When I told my brother, his first reaction was o_O (big exploding eyes). It was something that he totally could not comprehend, and he even laughed a little. I think he was surprised by the scale of my operation.

Told a roommate of mine, basically showed him some artwork. His reaction was, "that's kinda cool." Didn't really care.

Anyone have funny stories to share of first time reactions to your fetish?

I told my five best friends about my sleepy fetish when I was fourteen (in 1975), and they thought it was a bit odd, but their reaction was more, "What's the big deal? So what? Etc." One of them then confessed to a bondage fetish. So that was pretty much a non-drama.

My mom pretty much had to know, and so did my sister, from fairly early on, but they never said anything about it. More about this later...


My last girlfriend was a bit squicked out about it, but not overly so. She didn't run out of the room screaming, anyway. But, not too long afterward, we did break up.

My liberal, "semi-hippy" aunt and uncle had a harder time with it than my conservative, fundamentalist-type aunt, for some reason.

I've never told anyone and maybe never will, but I'm not going to tell any of my family members anyway. I think it's weird myself, just imagine how my family would react...

No, not an option for me.

I've mentioned this on another issue in another forum, but I'll run the risk of repeating myself: I've been married twice. I never told my first wife, to whom I was reasonably happily married for 6 years (reasonably happy means we seldom argued about anything), and she ended up divorcing me and not giving me the "real" reason why (she said it was for another man, but it really wasn't) -- I always suspected that she discovered my "sleepy-fantasy fixation" and that so disgusted her that she left the marriage. I told my second wife, and we've been married for 2 decades and then some. I've concluded that there is a very good chance that revealing my secret kept the second marriage alive, and not revealing my sleepy fantasy interest doomed the first marriage. Still, this is only a guess on my part, not the same as absolute proof. Also, no one else knows at the present time except those of you who visit this website, and a few Ebay acquaintances from whom I have bought and sold comic books and whom I have never met person-to-person.

Nothing really happened when I said it to a former high school classmate, she was just curios and wanted to know a little more about it and myself, but she didn't judge me at all.

My mom pretty much had to know, and so did my sister, from fairly early on, but they never said anything about it

I appreciate your words Gytalf2000, especially the ones about your mother. You are slightly younger than I but not that much and I remember my high school years when I traced wonder woman and sheena comic book images onto trace paper and invented my own story lines with triple the number of KO's and bondage scenes. As you so incitefully said, "my mom pretty much had to know". I never told her, but there is no way she never saw examples of my tracings and my comic books kept under my bed. Your words strike a cord in me . . . like your mom, my mother never said anything about it, and never let on in the least. Til this moment, I never really thought about that. My mom is deceased now, so I can't talk to her about it, but all of a sudden I find myself wondering for the first time in my life, "What did she think about it?" To me this is a profound question. Thanks for bringing it up.

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of us actually struggle with our fetish. Does anyone else agree?
I may well be wrong but I suspect that most people have a fetish of some kind ranging from a particular part of the anatomy of the opposite sex to bondage etc.
To my mind we need to recognize how much this is nothing more than fantasy and probably to set limits on what we allow ourselves to view (no under age etc).

Posts made on this and several other forums have made it clear many participants in this website do have uneasiness about their gga fantasies -- that seems quite obvious. On another forum I wrote about a fellow in the upper mid-west who bought a Sheena comic book on Ebay from me several years ago, and with the payment check he sent a note saying, "Sometimes I wonder about myself. Am I normal or am I weird for enjoying these books so much." I wrote back, "Without doubt 95% of the buyers of good girl art on Ebay have feelings just like you. The other 5% are business men making a profit." However, his comment alerted me to the fact that many do feel uneasy about their sleepy fantasy, a thought I hadn't had before that. For myself, I honestly can say, I have never thought about it, that is, until that Ebay buddy brought the subject up. I do have a theory that my first marriage (which ended in divorce after 6 years, even though we never argued, never) may have had my fantasy at the heart of the reason for the divorce, although my first wife said it was because she loved someone else (wasn't true, she broke up with him after only 3 months, and has never remarried since), and for 6 years of marriage I never mentioned the subject of comic books to her, and she never mentioned it to me, not once. I sometimes wonder if she opened my locked file cabinet at some point in our marriage to see what I keep inside it. So, when there is no apparant reason for the divorce, I have conjectured this could have been the "real" reason.

My mother on the other hand, certainly saw my high school tracings and comic books, yet she never once discussed it, not once. My brother did, but not my mom. And my brother thought it was "cool". So here 50 years later, I find myself wondering, somewhat unexpectedly, what she thought about it, especially since, as Gytalf2000 says, "there's no way she could not know." Yet she never brought it up. The fact that she never mentioned it must mean something, but what? I makes me wonder.

As for setting limits, I wholeheartedly concur. Child pornography should be avoided, and for me, I avoid all pornography, period. Pornograpy means "frontal nudity and/or explicit sex acts". Most of that stuff turns me off. So I avoid it. There never was anything pornograpic in the stories of Wonder Woman, Sheena, Rulah, Nyoka, or any of these golden age comic book heroines. That's why it's called "Good Girl Art". . . .they were all "good girls". You make an excellent point, Owen, we should set limits, most emphatically.

One day, back in the mid-1970s when I was in Junior High, I returned from shool and, upon entering my room, discovered that I had carelessly left a few of my tracings of comic book KO scenes on my dresser. It was also clear that my mom had been in my room that day, since she had dusted and made every thing all neat and tidy. (I was a fairly neat kid, but she had even higher standards about neatness and tidiness than I did. Ha!)
I did notice an odd, quizzical look on her face that evening, but she did not say anything. I was very happy that she had no desire to confront me about my odd fetish.
A few days later, she told my sister and me about one time, she and my father (he died in an electrical accident at work, when I was only a few weeks old, so I never knew him), were swimming in a lake, and she was annoying him by flouncing around, tugging at him, and splashing water on him, etc., and he jokingly told her that he really enjoyed swimming just by himself, so if she didn't cut it out and stop harrassing him, he was going to knock her out, drag her to the shore, and finish his nice relaxing swim with no more female irritation or hindrances.
She gave me a certain look upon finishing the story, which I think (in my own twisted, warped, and demented mind) indicated that my father had the same sleepy fetish. I do not know this for an absolute fact, but the timing of her telling that story -- right after discovering my "stash" of KO scenes -- made me think that she was telling me that she was cool with it, since my dear old dad had the same odd predilictions!

You know Gytalf, once again you are hitting on something really deep. Much of what people, especially significant people like parents, older siblings or spouses, tell us early in our lives is what I call "cryptic" -- meaning "hidden". Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 or even more decades for us to reach a convincing conclusion about what has been said to us when we were young. The same can happen at an older age if the one being "cryptic" is a spouse or brother or sister. In many cases, I bet, a lot of people never fully figure out what someone meant by something they said long ago. Your mother was being intentionally "cryptic", because she wanted to acknowledge something she saw, but not really publically put it on display. And perhaps she was hoping you'd see a form of affirmation in her words .... like "it's OK that you trace comic book scenes, your dad did similar things, and if he did it can't be all that bad". But she did not want to publically air the issue, so she told a "cryptic" story in order to hint at her message to you. I dare say, every mortal being has hundreds of "cryptic" messages in their past, many of which may take a lifetime to figure out. It's part of what makes life a great and marvelous and intriguing mystery.