[Deleted User 37722]

Freddy said: “I want to break free!”

I’m putting myself out there again… again. Before I was in a relationship, I’d do this a lot. On, off, on, off. Every time promising myself it’ll be better this time. “Just be open and friendly and things will happen naturally”, I’d tell myself. I’d re-invent myself in the hope I’d be more intriguing, I guess. I’d realise as soon as I set up a profile, I’d have nothing to say or any idea what I’m doing. I observe for a while to try get the vibe but I don’t want to just copy. I feel like a newbie amongst pros, yet this has been a part of me my whole life. I never know where I fit. I’m so shy I can’t talk. I can barely press the like button on a post without anxiety. I imagine people won’t care or respond to what I say, if I ever dared to say anything. If I do say something I worry its wrong or doesn’t flow with the vibe. In that state of mind, I’m almost bound to say something inappropriate or depressing. I worry that people will judge me if I talk about the things I like, especially in the AB world. If I get judged just by one person (and most of the time it’s me!), that’s it, its over, everyone hates me, I should leave, I don’t belong here. I’m the turd in this punchbowl and I’m ruining it for everyone else. So, to save myself and everybody else from my BS I’ll just say nothing at all, and get nothing but a build-up of frustration from that. I’ll read what others are talking about, and if it’s something I want like friends and a place in the community, that frustration turns to anger, extreme jealousy and sadness, all brewing together in a pressure cooker. I’m back where I was 2 years ago, before my relationship started and I was lost. Now my relationship has ended and I’m back to this… feeling lost and trying to find myself again. Before I met my (vanilla) partner I knew I needed to be in an AB relationship. I realise now more than ever that this is true. It just wont work. I won’t be content unless it’s an AB/CGL relationship. It’s so limiting. Add a sprinkle of that to the stew. Add a sprinkle of how my partner felt when she realised, when I told her, that I wouldn’t be content without this in my life and in goes a bit of sour guilt. Even if she had wanted to share the experience, there would have always been a “niggle”. A feeling that she’d only be doing it to make me happy. I’m proud that I never let this take hold of me, to the point I put my fantasy before her happiness and forced anything. On the other hand, I have put my happiness and this part of me before her. Alongside that niggling feeling there’d be my internal conflict to contend with. I don’t think we would have found the right balance. I am not balanced yet. I’m drawn to it like nothing else. A pull I describe as the extreme gravity from a black hole, and my conflict being the fear and desire of crossing its event horizon and never coming back. That pressure cooker was boiling in the background even if I didn’t know it. It burst and we both knew what had happened and what we needed to do.

But I know the feeling it’ll give me when I find my place in this community, those friends, or that special someone. I’ve had glimpses of it here and there. Enough to know it’s everything to me. That’s the dream. It’s a feeling like no other. Even if it caused me pain and sadness, all the way to breaking point, that feeling will be worth having gone through hell for, if I manage to get out of it in the end. I hope it’ll make me a better person. My dream is heaven, but through conflict I struggle toward it. Once I’ve found balance, I will have broken free!

[Nathalie]

My gosh that was beautiful. I’ve felt the same way my whole life, even still to this day in some aspects. Have you thought of becoming a writer

[Deleted User 37722]

Aw thank you:) I’ve not thought of being a writer... I’d probably be too scared to post anything

[Motherly]

I can absolutely understand how you feel in the first part of your post. Social anxiety is a beast! I also struggle with these feelings, and being in a virtual setting makes it feel ridiculous that I overthink much of my interactions—even within the community.

I’ve found it helps to take small steps though. Sometimes it helps to actually go down the rabbit hole and ask yourself, “Okay, I make this post/say something…and then what?” going through the “…and then what?” Until you get to a place that feels like it basically ends. What if the worst happens? And then what? Logically, what would then happen? Sometimes it helps to stop, answer the feelings of unknown with logical reasoning, and see if you can get through that potential or if that potential is truly, truly too much without a safety net answer beyond it that makes the discomfort bearable in the end.

A lot else of what you’ve said about your infatuation, perhaps obsession you sort of eluded to, with CGL or AB is probably something you need to work on thinking more realistic about.

The truth of it all is that the beauty and magic you see in photos, YouTube personas, clips, and stories is that these are primarily staged or inflated, exaggerated. The truth is, nobody is truly, truly living like a “real baby” as an adult, and nobody is living solely to fulfill an adult’s desire to be immersed into these regressive desires at all times. Those are fantasy romance novels just as typical romance embellish the “what could be” and middle age housewives flip through the pages eager to feel Fabio sweep them off of the warm beach and shower her in affections despite being frumpy and average, at best.

YouTubers get paid to sell narratives and entertainment. If they told you about how average and mundane majority of their relationship or life truly is then you wouldn’t be so intrigued to keep watching. If the OnlyFans model told everyone that they weren’t really living completely immersed or that they weren’t feeling as regressed as they lead on then it wouldn’t be as fun to watch and fantasize about being.

The community also has built an internal component that feeds from this same sort of situation but instead of a monetary, financial gain the individuals are after attention to feed their desires to be desirable, special, and even socially popular online. We’ve fed this by saying CGL is all about the regression, and that even the Caregiver only truly exists to facilitate and further this super special regression thing we’ve identified. We encourage using each other by RPing excessively, never paying kind that our individual fantasies revolve entirely around ourselves feelings good, special, and spoiled and forgetting the other people are also actually people with their own feelings of wanting to be special. We feed our own selfishness, justify blocking, ignoring, or ghosting those don’t feed our inflated feelings, and expect we deserve regression because we do it. We tell each other they deserve it and that using others is ultimately right because that’s how you find the ultimate Caregiver who robotically lives entirely for your regressive joy, which was defined years before even meeting this individual so forget the functional idea of letting the “parent” choose if you need diapers, use a pacifier, wear this or that, or have home chores.

I do believe many people in the community will either discover that the notion of truly “living 24/7” as a Little or Adult Baby does not and cannot exist in the fulfilling way described within the community. They realize they do benefit from adulthood, even enjoying some components deemed “responsibility”, and carry on a mostly average relationship that has these regressive and parental care quirks sprinkled throughout instead of soaked in. Some of the most well-known “full-time, 24/7” Littles still do very adult things like drink alcohol, and these should be tipoffs that majority of their everyday lives aren’t actually lived immersed in fantasy age regression.

Many others will spend their lives wasted away in this fantastical land of hopeful immersion. Destined to just RP online or “cosplay” occasionally at events like CAPcon or TeddyCon, they grow old alone, still reciting they’re looking for a “real” or “true” Caregiver. Nobody in reality lives up to their qualifications, and they grow more stubborn with labels of “fake” or “abusive” thrown in the faces of Caregivers who misunderstood the entire dynamic as something they get to better define once partnered with a regressor.

I know I sound extremely cynical but it isn’t all doom and gloom. There is a legitimate balance that occurs if we let go of the belief that we need it exactly this or that way. That balance not a 50/50 thing either. It’s more like 10% CGL/90% living life as it comes, challenges and all while not being concerned about what a baby should or shouldn’t, would it wouldn’t, do.

I’m a Mommy. My partner identifies as Adult Babies. We live a mostly normal, typical life in reality, but initially we expected to live out a fully fleshed out, immersive CGL “lifestyle”. In reality, we have some quirks, like my partner wearing diapers instead of regular underwear or that we do a very leisure “bath time” event once every week or two. Sometimes I feed them a bottle while we watch a show. Sometimes I dry nurse them when we’re cuddling in bed. But most days we don’t do these things or do things to intentionally follow some storyline of what a parent or child should be doing. And when we have a cuddle (a few times a day) it isn’t necessarily centered around making my partner feel babyish. Most days I believe were really pretty average people, albeit perhaps more cuddly and emotionally dependent on one another.

Most people who meet me online assume I’m extremely immersed into some fantasy “lifestyle” though. Most assume I’m always excessively parental, or that I desire to act parental to everyone in every situation of my life. Most people say they even feel intimidated because I’m a real-life community Mommy, as if I’m some living characture they’ve read about or seen in a few BeDeeSeM videos that portray a very demanding, stern woman who desires nothing out of life but to belittle others. Though, others believe I must dress and behave extremely maternal at all times. The truth is, I only really wear black, and I don’t do traditional make-up or nails, and I really hate being seen as stern or demanding. We have some pretty silly assumptions going around the community!

People online assume my partners hate working a job and are too intimated to be in charge of paying a bill. The truth is, my partner really loves their job so much that we joke about how they’re a workaholic. They feel proud taking care of the bills they do. They’re still regressive, childish, playful, and goofy though. Unfortunately, they do get depressed, feeling guilty because they had years of the community drilling into them that a “real Little” or a “real baby” doesn’t do these things of responsibility because it’s “too much” for a Little one to do. That’s just not true though. They get a lot of fulfillment doing very traditional tasks of adulthood! It’s so disheartening that the community has caused them to occasionally feel like they’re an imposter and that they should feel bad for being comfortable in adulthood.

What I’m getting to is that you should not define yourself solely based on how you tend to express yourself. You don’t need immersion. A relationship without a Caregiver-identifying partner can absolutely be very successful. Typical adult responsibility is something you will find fulfilling and should not be a part of your self-degradation or insecurities for enjoying or appreciating.

Live life! A good way to determine how important something is to your lifetime is to think about dying. On your deathbed, at your end of life and your reflecting on your achievements and past, will this (whatever “this” is) be a logical regret? Will you feel like you didn’t live as good of a life if you had/hadn’t done whatever that is? Would you regret missing out on a genuine, deep, and loving bond because you got so hung up looking for perfection? Let me give you a hint: you’ll regret missing out on some typical/expected major life achievements and time you wasted not on loved ones. You’re not going to regret not having an adult babyhood fully fleshed out. So, take that as a calmness of sorts. Have this “lifestyle” as your candy, your sweet treat, your hobby, and just be who you naturally are, childish and goofy sometimes and mature and full of experience other times. Let your regressive trait be a sprinkle, not an overwhelming downpour. You’ll have the best life with that than seeking the fantasy, romance novel “lifestyle” of regression.

[Deleted User 37722]

This is so true! Thank you for taking the time to write that:)

I think my biggest issue with it has always been finding a balance. I certainly couldn’t do it 24/7 and while I’m aware that what I see and read isn’t necessarily what’s actually happening in other people’s lives, I think what drives these thoughts are simply basic companionship instincts with people who we can relate to. And when you’re not getting those it can knock you out of balance.

I very much agree about having successful relationships without an ab or cgl dynamic. I loved my partner regardless. I think my major problem here was self acceptance. I have a lot of conflict within myself about being an ab. About wanting to regress. My partner accepted who I was and everything about me. She would often ask how I felt about it, or if the “pull” was particularly strong at any given moment. I would put myself in a spiral, telling myself I’m dumb for being a man who wants to go back to being little. That conflict leaks out and it’s not a nice thing for any partner to see. I would hold off for long periods of time “because I’m an adult and adults don’t do this”... and then I’d suddenly cave in, cycle through binging and purges, and then feel the shame of it all afterward. I can’t imagine what this was like for my partner.
I want to work on balancing my little and adult lives in a way that works for both of them. I’ve been seeing a therapist who’s helped me a lot so far. I’d have never expressed how I was feeling it wasn’t for the support I’m receiving, and the self discovery I’m going through now.

Thank you for your insight:) I’m definitely going to read that over again:)