‘Has anyone else noticed how everyone seems to be calling their boyfriends “Daddy” during sex now?,’ a friend asked recently.

Yes, we all agreed.

It’s all over social media, you can buy t-shirts with the words ‘Daddy’s girl’ or ‘Yes Daddy’ plastered over the front and ‘make her call you Daddy’ seems to have become a synonym for being great in bed.

Day 321 without sex: a police officer put me in a headlock and I yelled “choke me daddy” — Khadi Don (@KhadiDon) July 18, 2018

Even Ryan Reynolds has been drawn on the subject


Now people are @ing him many times a day with all sorts of Daddy requests. If you’ve ever got half an hour to kill, have a look.



Why?

Funnily enough, studies on this subject are tricky to pin down but Google search results indicate that since 2004 there has been a sizeable increase in people searching for the words ‘call me daddy’ and other related terms.

But, irrespective of where it came from, why do people get off on using the word ‘Daddy’ in the bedroom?

While Justin Lehmiller, a social psychologist and author of Tell Me What You Want, struggles with the same lack of peer-reviewed proof of the increase, he has some clear ideas as to why it might be such a draw:

‘I suspect a big part of the appeal here has to do with the fact that using the “Daddy” label helps to establish a dominant-submissive dynamic,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.

‘More than anything else, It seems that people’s use of this term is tied to a desire to give up some degree of power or control to their partner.

‘The isn’t surprising because in the survey of over 4,000 adults that I performed for Tell Me What You Want, I found that submission was one of the most popular fantasy themes to emerge.

‘In fact, 87% of participants said they’d fantasised about taking on a submissive role during sex. Not only that, but people were more likely to fantasise about submission than dominance, and they fantasised about submission more often, too.

‘To the extent that people are indeed using the term “Daddy” to refer to their partners more often than they were in the past, this may just reflect increasing comfort with acknowledging an interest in submission.’

So, is there anything wrong with wanting to call your other half Daddy?

‘It’s probably nothing we need to worry about,’ Justin says.

‘While some people might think this is creepy because they associate use of this term with incest fantasies, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

‘The popularity of this term says more about the popularity of BDSM interests than anything.’

While Freud was always obsessed with children wanting to have sex with their parents of the opposite gender (the Oedipus complex), experts say it rarely, if ever, has anything to do with it, instead talking about that power dynamic.

Despite that, many find the use of the term offensive and/or a huge turnoff, with some going as far as saying those who use the term are ‘weirdos’



As is so often the case with sexual fantasies, it might be a bit weird or confusing and you might not understand why you like it.

But as long as both parties are comfortable and consenting, then there’s no reason to waste time feeling guilty.

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