Luna. Every week a man arrives in my inbox carrying some version of the same two questions: am I normal? and how do I tell her? — usually after a decade of carrying the thing alone. So let's do the first one fast: yes. The research on fetishes (Lehmiller's fantasy surveys, the Belgian prevalence work, the classification studies) keeps returning the same picture — these interests are ordinary features of human wiring, distributed across happy marriages, boring jobs, and every personality type. Secrecy, not the fetish, is what does the damage.
The second question is the real work of this series. Disclosure fails when it's staged as a confession — high stakes, grave face, please-don't-leave-me energy — because the framing tells her to be alarmed before the content even arrives. It succeeds as a runway: third-party probes first (an article, a podcast, someone else's story), her reaction read honestly, escalation only on warmth, and a graceful landing if the answer is no. The same calibration that governs everything else in my lane — because a fetish is just new territory with higher personal stakes.
It's the most common body-part fetish humans have. Around 14% of people report foot-related fantasies in Lehmiller's survey work, a Belgian study put foot fetishes at 17% of men, and in Scorolli's classification of fetish interests, feet and toes accounted for nearly half of all body-part preferences. Whatever shame you've attached to it, the numbers say: ordinary wiring, extremely well-populated club.
How do I tell my wife about a fetish?
Runway, not courtroom. Let the topic enter the room before your stake in it does — a third-party reference, a curious question about someone else's story — and read her reaction to the abstract version first. Warmth earns a personal step ('honestly, that one's mine'); neutrality earns patience; discomfort earns a graceful retreat that costs you nothing, because you never staked the marriage on the reveal. Never dump it mid-argument, mid-sex, or as a confession with a grave face.
When is a fetish actually a problem?
Three tests, none about content: consent (does acting on it require someone's non-consent?), distress (is it causing you or her genuine suffering?), and flexibility (has it become the only road to arousal, crowding out everything else?). Fail one and it's worth working on, possibly with a professional. Pass all three and what you have is a preference — the same category as liking redheads, just less advertised.
The conversation you've been rehearsing for years — coached properly.
Luna's walkthroughs cover the reveal, the reaction, and everything after.