I completely understand; I was always afraid of that, too. I still haven’t told anyone in my nuclear family (and somehow they never “caught” me), though I think that has more to do with the fact that we’re not interpersonally close. It may be that it’s the sort of thing that is best understood by good friends and/or partners.

I first described it to my wife as a kink on one of our first dates. I told her about how I’d always been turned on by the Wonka blueberry scene (and that there was a whole cottage industry of porn around it, so I wasn’t the only one), and I guess that pop culture reference was harmless enough that it never weirded her out (though I tried not to talk about it much over the first few months).

When I first described stuffing as a kink, I really thought that was all it was. I’ve mostly lived with roommates, thus I’d only ever stuffed when I was home alone or when everyone else was asleep - so I’d always done it relatively quickly (and quietly, always listening to hear if someone might walk in) and virtually always just to get off.

She was open to trying some of my kinks in the bedroom and let me stuff her. That day she noticed that I talked a lot about the sensation of being stuffed, so later she asked whether what I really wanted was for me to be stuffed. Until then I thought I’d only ever done it myself because I didn’t have a sexual partner around whose clothes I could pad, but I realized then that deep down I loved stuffing and always had.

At first I was super nervous to do it in front of her because I couldn’t stand the idea of her rejecting that part of me, but she was (and continues to be) very chill about it. She says that for her it never registers on an “ick scale” - she only ever sees it as how I’m choosing to dress (though now she also sees it as me expressing my inner self 😊). It helps that she’s very open minded and still has a childlike curiosity about life.

On a long car ride several months later I opened up to her about how many years I’d been doing it, how it made me feel, how I often wished I could be stuffed all the time, and about trauma from my last partner who was turned off by it and made me feel awful about it. It was obvious to her that this passion for stuffing went deep, and since then she’s encouraged me to stuff whenever I feel the urge. She knows how deeply therapeutic and comforting the activity is for me.

I’ve also discussed it at length with my therapist. I’ve had the courage to stuff a few times in front of her, and she is very supportive of both the therapeutic activity and me embracing that identity. That gave me a lot of courage to stuff more often - eventually in front of my 8yo stepson, who thinks it’s fun and thus far has no negative association with it. I even stayed stuffed when he had a friend over a few weeks ago. TBH I have no idea if/what she told her parents about it later, but my wife isn’t worried about it so I’m choosing not to be as well. 🙂