Why Are We Ab?

[Sir Stinkypants]

back to diapers, wearing them and being childish in private, calms me, it takes me back to a time i cant actually remember, but where im sure i was unconditionally loved, cared for and looked after. all of my adult worries and problems drift away and I can be at peace, even if it is for a short while.

Hiya Fozzy!

Sorry it has taken so long to address your posts (assuming you wished me to?)! You tell a a mean tale full of some mean things! You have obviously already done a fair amount of soul searching, and undoubtedly have come to some some valid conclusions regarding the origins and your perspective on your ABDL tendencies. Even if we feel there are things about ourselves which are wrong (and I don't mean to infer that being AB, DL, or both are wrong, or if so I am as wrong as any!), we cannot have effective understanding or the ability to change without first finding ways to accept and love the self that is. I think you have a fairly healthy perspective on your life and self, even when it comes to those traumatic childhood and adolescent events you speak of. I say this because those who do not have your sort of perspective would not have delved as deep as you have. Our pasts leave two kinds of mark on us, scars and open wounds. Scars we will have if we have been hurt, but open wounds must be healed into scars or they inhibit the growth of the soul. To some degree we are stuck with the pasts we really had and the scars they have left, but healing the wounds is a choice and an effort...

The quote above is beautiful, and expresses most of my own sentiments about being AB. It is a haven of escape for me, but also a form of therapy I think, and a window into some of my own deeper mysteries. I think being a big baby sometimes allows me to be a better big boy when that is called for. Thank you for sharing your story, please post more if that would please you!

P.S. I was so glad to read your handling of that misunderstanding with Sarah AB! I actually see where you were coming from initially, she did seem to favor nature over nurture, but as such I value her contribution to this discussion because I'm sure many share her opinions. My own opinion is that AB and DL, as well as BDSM and other fetishes, always have psychological rather than hereditary or congenital bases. Because that is my opinion I suggested that thought to her myself, but it is not actually important to me that I convince her of anything. She is a free individual, free to seek self-enlightenment (or not) in whatever manner seems good to her. She may be right and I wrong also, for who knows her better than her? I hope she is well and, whether or not she reads this, she understands that I speak and think of her with the utmost respect. I can tell by your handling of her challenge to your comment that you do, too...

[d80-FIN]

this has really been an eyeopening topic. i can totally relate to some of stories and points. very helpful. thanks.

[mike indiapers]

I don't know why, but since I was a little boy I've always envied other people who were in diapers.

This is a great quote and I have experience being on both sides of it! When I was still in diapers, I remember having very mixed emotions about having to wear them, but deep down becoming very attached to them. My diapers provided me with comfort, security and brought me lots of attention from my mom and other caretakers that dealt with my diapers. This attention was not always positive, but the good outweighed the bad. As I grew older and was continually put in diapers for having accidents, I started to become more self conscious about wearing diapers and didn't want the attention anymore. I felt very babyish going through diaper changes and remember looking at myself in the mirror while in my diapers and seeing myself as a big toddler.

Once finally out of diapers for good, I soon missed them and my feelings grew stronger over time. My attachment to diapers was too strong and permanent and I found myself looking at other diapered toddlers and wanting to trade places with them. I would intentionally wonder the diaper aisle of the grocery store in hopes of seeing a mommy purchasing diapers for her toddler and wish it was me.

I wanted to go back to be that little kid in diapers again and stay 3 years old forever.

[Sir Stinkypants]

Just to reiterate, I am very much enjoying reading everyone's stories! I am finding the differences between the stories of others and my own as fascinating as I find the similarities. It's a curious truth that we do tend to learn most about ourselves through our interactions with others, and I feel I have learned much here! If and when interest in this thread peters out, I will very likely start a similar thread in hopes of hearing from some different folks...though of course anyone here is welcome to join that one, too!

Thank you all so much for sharing your stories! I know we've all enjoyed and benefited from them!! Keep 'em coming, please!!

[mike indiapers]

I hate to see this thread die and hope we can resurrect the topic on the psychology of why we are ABDLs and share more of our experiences. I am constantly going back in my mind to my childhhod days when I was still in diapers and love to explore what caused my attraction to this lifestyle. I find sharing my experiences to be very therapeutic and rewarding.

As an older child still wearing diapers, I remember feeling very different from the other kids, and this difference was magnified when I started to develop strong feelings for my diapers. I felt like I was carrying a burden inside me until I discovered that there were others like me when I found DPF.

When I was a kid, I thought I was the only one still required to wear diapers at my age and I didn't have other friends that were conspicous bedwetters or had accidents like me that wore diapers (to my knowledge). I am sure there may have been a few bedwetters, but I never detected they wore diapers for it unlike in my home where my diapers were pretty obvious. My mom often left them out for convenience and didn't try to hide the fact that she diapered me. I remember trying to hide them on a few occasions only to find them out in the open again. I now wonder if other bedwetters and diaper wearers were just more successful at hiding their diapers.

[babystevie]

I wish I could just be open about wearing diapers. They are just my choice of underwear.

[diapered_jeff48801]

For me I don't remember being in diapers as a child, I am pretty I was potty trained around 2 or 3. The usual age. My love of diapers started when I was 7. my family for financial reasons moved in with my alcoholic abusive grandfather, and I at the age had a small bladder so I was always having to run to the bathroom. I had a room upstairs and at least once or twice I'd wake up having to go and would need to go downstairs in the dark (I was scared of the dark at the time) go past my drunken grandpa who slept on the couch when he was home, who slept very lightly and yell at me if he heard me coming down the stairs.

I was very fearful of him as at one point he picked me up by my neck as a child for doing something wrong, which I don't rememer happening. So I was very scared to go downstairs at night, and couldn't sleep while my bladder was full. There were nights I would pee in my underwear and hide them, until a cousin of mine came to stay over, he was still in diapers and I took one. After wearing my first one I knew I liked it, though my brother found it and teased me mercilessly about it. wasn't for a few more years did I try it again and still loved it.

Took me a lot of years to be comfortable with being a DL, thinking I was the only one until 7 years ago when I found diaper sites on the net, a few binge/purge cycles later and an understanding wife and I'm a very happy DL!

[diapered_jeff48801]

Apologies about the spelling mistakes but I've had a couple beers

[Tadpole]

As an older child still wearing diapers, I remember feeling very different from the other kids, and this difference was magnified when I started to develop strong feelings for my diapers.

At the same age, I was feeling jealous of kids who still had to wear diapers (and even more jealous of kids who still used a pacifier) because I *didn't* need them. So I wished I could so as to be "different". Completely the opposite, yet ended up with the same result that we both were attracted to diapers.

[LilFozzyJ5]

Thanks for your kind words folks, it is nice to be able to talk to people about all of this, even if it is not face to face. I can see a lot of similar stories popping up, but there is still such an amazing diversity between abdls that I am amazed. It really is hard to place us all in any kind of label:

I have thought about this and i have come up with a series of major 'levels', with a few flavoursome additions to spice them all up. You can agree or disagree:) :

1. Paci/dummy suckers, not exactly abdls, but i think close enough to warrent a mention

2. diaper (Nappy) lovers... folks who just get a kick out of wearing diapers

3. Diaper lovers who wet their garments

4. Diaper lovers who wet and poop their garments

5. Adult babies who like to wear

6. Adult babies who like to wear and wet

7. Adult babies who like to wear, wet and poop

add to the mix, those that get sexual gratification from any of the above, and/or people that have a medical condition that produces different levels of incontinence, who have come to love one or more of the above.

additions:

Carers: mummy/daddy/nurse/nanny (Switches - play parent and baby)

Sissies

furries

bdsm

every possible gender choice

it makes the world of the abdl a very diverse place.

Im sure others can think of other points.

As to my experiences. I did write them down for my doc to read, and would post them if someone was a. interested and b. if it wont upset people.

cheers

Fozzy

[jameson]

Like many, I have always had a desire to be in diapers. I was potty trained very early, before I was 2. My mother has always bragged about how early I was trained. But I learned much later that I was actually diapered at night until I was nearly four due to encopresis. I was a child who was constipated and held it all day long but then went while asleep.

I have only one a very vague memory of wearing a diaper that was containment-deficient during play time, and, though it's difficult to imagine, it must have been before I was two. I do remember having a drawer full of plastic pants that I would sometimes put on and then urinate into them. These must have been used to cover the pampers for my nighttime accidents. Disposible diapers were a relatively new invention and apparently weren't terribly effective. I remember very clearly when my parents decided to throw them out. I also remember when my father found one while cleaning out the closet. I so desperately wanted to get my hands on it but never did.

After that, my story is like many of yours: I used multiple layers of toilet paper; I peed/messed myself; I wore several pair of underwear; and, sometimes, I used towels and plastic bags. When I was eight, I stole one of my cousins diapers and used it. Mostly, I just fantasized about diapers. I remember being four or five and visiting a home where there was a package of Luvs in the nursery. And my first experience masturbating occurred while fantasizing about diapers.

Of course, everything changed when I turned sixteen and began to drive. I went to a neighboring town, bought a package of Curity adult diapers that were too small and entered into the world of adult diaper wearing. The next day, I made another trip a bought the old green Depends they used to make.

Diapers are far less sexual to me than they once were. Now, they're relaxing. Like others, they give a sense of comfort and security and, I'm sure, freedom. Control -- or the lack of it -- has always been an issue for me, I guess.

[Sir Stinkypants]

Has anybody seen this site? I stumbled across it yesterday while looking online for any references to material published years ago by the "Infantae Press" (for more on that, see the "Love of Diapers Before the Internet" thread).

http://understanding.infantilism.org/

This is an "academic" site that seeks to answer this very question -- done by a person called "BitterGrey" whom I've seen on other ABDL sites over the years. Very interesting.

I have seen this! They've been around for quite awhile (I remember them from the same time as DPF), indeed I had almost forgotten them! Thanks for bringing them up!

[WillDL]

I can't access a specific reason from my childhood. That said I somewhat fit the psychological profile from the link given earlier - distant from & not as butch as Dad, maybe not properly separated from Mom, etc. My earliest memory of doing this myself is of wetting and pooping my underwear in bed as a tween, usually just enough to get the underwear dirty & not damage the bedclothes. Cleaned it up myself & never was confronted. I don't remember having any conscious reason why, it just felt good. Urge and practice has been off & on over the years. The most organized I've been is to make diapers out of old towels & plastic pants out of trash bags. I like the feeling of relaxation and warmth peeing, the excitement of 'losing control' when in diapes, the squishy feeling back there after a poop. Don't do either real often, and poop is just way too smelly.

[rosalie.bent]

It is always a fascinating study as to why people are AB - especially regressive AB. There are a lot of theories and the reality is that they basically fit into three broad categories

DEVELOPMENTAL: as we grow up we 'transition' thru a number of developmental stages from infancy to childood to adolescence and then to adulthood. IN the vast majority of cases this development is not perfect and we all retain some 'untransitioned' elements in our behaviour, mostly minor. In the case of regressive adult babies these untransitioned elements are quite strong and many. This leaves ABs needing a number of elecments of infancy or childhood. it is obviously more complex than that, but it is the core of the matter

INCIDENTAL: For many children there can be 'incidents' or a group of them which cause ABs to become fixated on certain ages, behaviours or objects. Generally these fixations or attachment objects remain throughout life and dont vary that much. These incidents can be abuse (sexual or pscyhological), trauma or even 'percieved' incidents that may have been minor or misinterpreted by the child.

OTHER: there is always a category for 'we dont know' and this is it. There is certainly a case to suggest that some people are just born this way and just as people are born with physcial ailments, so people are often born with emotional and pscyhological 'ailments' or at least a little bitt away from the average.

Many times ABs want to know 'where it came from' and while that is certainly an interesting thing, it rarely brings any relief. Knowing is not healing, in this case. Healing - in the case of ABs - is about finding balance between the drives and needs and the rest of life. THAT is healing.

[mike indiapers]

I believe my ABDL side was the result of a mix between developmental and incidental, where the attention and nurturing I felt I was denied in childhood was equated to wearing diapers and the care that goes with it. In addition, being put in diapers and made to wear and use them as an older child caused psychological trauma that imprinted the desire for being put in diapers into adulthood.

I agree that the quest for answers and explanations provides little relief and healing to the needs I now have as an ABDL. However, the understanding does help with the acceptance of being an ABDL and I know this is a part of me that I will never let go. I agree that the key is finding balance between fulfilling these needs and other factors in our lives.

I find myself being drawn to this community for support and acceptance and that talking about my feelings, desires and past experiences as a child help with my journey and finding the right balance. I hope others get the same level of satisfaction sharing their thoughts on this subject.