You Can't Cure Your Kink
I am using kink here to mean "a narrow sexual interest that you come back to more often than not," which could include fetishes (like feet), sex acts (like anal), types of people (like body size or shape), or types of sexual situations (like exhibitionism or humiliation).
Negative feelings about having a kink can range from light embarrassment to deep shame. Some folks have specific erotic interests that are so common that we barely think of them as kinks, and some folks are erotically drawn to things that are too damaging to do in real life. Wherever you and your kink land on that spectrum, one thing is for sure... its likely never going away.
Scientists have been unable to find a single clear explanation for why some people end up kinky and some don't. Currently, our best understanding of kink is that it most closely resembles a sexual orientation. Its more immutable than not, its seemingly random, and while you may have an event in your life that triggered your interest in your kink, that event probably didn't "cause" it. There are some factors that increase your likelihood of ending up kinky (like being male), but nothing that you can prevent.
Whether your kink is simply inconvenient or more problematic- its normal to wonder if there is some magic treatment that could make it go away. Asking this kind of question can be a substitute for doing the work of grieving what is true, and accepting it. By whatever cosmic roll of the dice, this is who you ended up being sexually. While that may be difficult, it could also be amazing.
Your sexuality is not a disease to be cured.
If "Can I make this go away?" is the first question unhappily kinky folks ask, then "why me?" is easily the second. Occasionally this is a helpful line of questioning. A small percentage of folks can trace their kinks origin back to a traumatic sexual experience that their brain has now eroticized. Sometimes working on healing from that trauma can reduce the pull of the kink. Sometimes working on trauma feels good otherwise, but doesn't change anything about what you're into sexually. Sometimes reenacting elements of a trauma from within the safe context of a negotiated BDSM scene IS the healing.
But if you aren't already in that slim category of people who know they have metabolized a trauma into a kink, then asking "why?" isn't going to be very helpful. Repressed memories are incredibly uncommon, and are almost more of an urban legend than a real phenomenon. And while it is theoretically possible to have had a preverbal experience that affected your erotic interests, asking "why" over and over won't help you remember it.
"Why" is often just a substitute for "I don't want this to be true."
Just like wanting a cure, asking "why" can often be our brain's way of engaging with a difficult truth by from a safe intellectual distance. It can feel easier than grief and acceptance work.
Both of these approaches are understandable, but when folks show up in my office with them, I want to help them skip to the more effective query of "Okay, now what?" Because although you can't cure your kink, and asking why you have it is a dead end, there are effective ways that sex therapy can help you approach your sexuality.
Follow along for part two of this series, where I discuss the common treatment goals for unhappily kinky people.