Am I Normal?

This book grew out of many conversations. Conversations with men who have a foot or shoe fetish, and conversations with women who love a partner whose sexuality has a particular focus there. These conversations were often thoughtful, open and curious; sometimes uncertain, sometimes remarkably relieved. Almost always, the same quiet question arose, unspoken or put directly: What does this actually mean for me, for us, for our relationship?

I wrote this book because, over the years, I came to realise that a calm, nuanced perspective grounded in everyday life was missing. Fetishism is too often either sensationalised or pathologised. Neither helps anyone. What is missing is a perspective that explains without judging and makes connections visible without oversimplifying them.

The foot and shoe fetish is particularly well suited to such a perspective. Not because it is more extreme than other forms of sexual preference, but because it is very concrete. Feet and shoes belong to everyday life, to movement, to expression. Precisely for this reason, they quickly enter a field of tension between their everyday familiarity and their erotic significance. This tension touches not only sexuality, but also questions of intimacy, gender roles and communication.

This book is written for men who want to understand their own sexuality better without having to justify it. It is equally written for women who want to understand what is at work inside their partner without losing themselves in the process. Both perspectives belong together. Once it becomes part of a relationship, fetishism is no longer a matter for one person alone.

From the outset, it was important to me not to write a guidebook. This book does not seek to offer recipes or prescribe right and wrong paths. Instead, it invites a closer look: at one’s own inner order, at that of one’s partner and at the dynamic that arises when the two meet. Here, insight does not come through instruction, but through putting things in context.

Expert knowledge plays an important role in this. Concepts, models and historical developments help to make sense of things that would otherwise remain vague. At the same time, knowledge loses its value when it loses touch with lived experience. That is why this book is deliberately written in the way one would talk with good friends: with interest, respect and a willingness to leave room for nuance.

For some readers, this book may be a confirmation; for others, a first cautious sense of relief; and for still others, simply an invitation to think further. It does not seek to assign or remove labels, but to foster understanding. Understanding of oneself, of the other person and of a form of sexuality that is less unusual than many have long believed.

If this book has a beginning, then it lies precisely here: in the willingness not to have to answer questions immediately, but first to take them seriously.