The Anxiety of being the lee (Mr):
People often assume that the hardest part of being the ticklee is the tickling itself.
Long before the first fingers touch skin, before the restraints are secured, before the teasing starts, the anxiety has already arrived. My mind races through all the usual fears.
How long will I last? How badly am I going to lose control? Will I be able to handle the intensity?
Every lee knows that feeling of anticipation where your heart beats a little faster and every second feels stretched out. Those fears are normal. They're part of the experience.
But for me, there's another layer underneath all of that.
When you're the lee, you're exposed. Not just physically, but emotionally. Every reaction is on display. Every involuntary laugh, every squirm, every desperate attempt to pull away. There's nowhere to hide. And when you've struggled with self-image issues, that vulnerability can feel even more intimidating.
The reality is that I'm not just worried about the tickling. I'm worried about being seen. About how I look when I'm restrained. About my body being the center of attention. About the little voice in my head that points out every flaw and asks why anyone would want to look at me in the first place.
Then there's another layer that doesn't get talked about nearly as much. Most people who meet me would probably assume I spend my free time intimidating people, not getting reduced to helpless laughter by a pair of skilled hands.
For a long time, that felt contradictory. We're surrounded by ideas about what men are supposed to be. Strong. Stoic. In control. The protector. The one who keeps it together when things get difficult.
Being the lee challenges every one of those expectations. There is no maintaining a tough-guy image when you're being relentlessly tickled. No way to look intimidating while you're laughing so hard you can barely breathe. No way to project strength while you're squirming, begging, negotiating, and completely at the mercy of someone else's mischievous intentions. Tickling strips away the image you've built and leaves you standing there as a very human, very vulnerable person.
Part of my anxiety comes from wondering how that fits with the rest of who I am. How can someone who enjoys heavy music and projects strength also crave an experience built around vulnerability, helplessness, and surrendering control?
The answer I've slowly come to is that these things aren't opposites.
Strength isn't the absence of vulnerability. If anything, willingly placing yourself in a position where you have no control, knowing you'll be exposed physically and emotionally, requires a different kind of courage than most people realize.
There's also another reality that many straight male lees eventually encounter. The numbers aren't exactly in our favor.
There seem to be plenty of men who enjoy being tickled. Finding women who genuinely enjoy being the tickler can often feel much more difficult. That imbalance can create its own kind of anxiety. Not only are you navigating insecurities about your body and questions about masculinity, but sometimes it can feel like you're searching for something that few people are interested in providing.
That combination can make a person wonder if they're alone. It's a strange contradiction. I crave the experience. I fantasize about it. I trust the people involved and genuinely want to be there. Yet there's always that anxious voice whispering in the background, questioning whether I belong, whether I should be embarrassed, whether wanting this somehow makes me less than the person the world expects me to be.
The funny thing is that every time I go through with it, reality rarely matches those fears. The people I'm playing with aren't focused on the things I criticize about myself. They're not measuring me against some impossible standard of masculinity. They're focused on the laughter, the reactions, the connection, the trust, and the shared experience.
The things that make a tickle session memorable have nothing to do with whether I look perfect or whether I fit someone's idea of what a man should be.
The longer I've been part of this community, the more I've realized that I'm not alone. There are plenty of men carrying the same fears, wrestling with the same insecurities, and trying to reconcile the same contradictions. We just don't talk about them very often.
The anxiety never completely disappears. I don't know if it ever will. But each time I allow myself to be vulnerable, each time I choose trust over insecurity, and each time I allow myself to be fully seen despite those fears, it gets a little quieter.
Being the ticklee isn't just an exercise in helplessness. Sometimes it's an exercise in self-acceptance too.