For crying out loud! Here you thought you’d heard of every conceivable kink and fetish. But now we’re talking about dacryphilia, sometimes called dacrylagnia or simply, the crying fetish.
Yes, some people have a crying kink. Just about anything you can conjure up, from sweeping generalities to minute specificity, is linked, somewhere, to someone, with sexual excitement.
Dacryphilia, which means “love of tears,” is not super common, but it exists and is common enough to attract people to chat boards and other sites where they can share their crying kink and dacryphilia resources.
These internet rooms may not look traditionally naughty—you’ll find video clips of crying scenes from movies, celebrity tears, crying photos, and detailed stories about someone crying.
Not everyone with dacryphilia will be gathering to chat with others about their crying fetish. It’s something that can be easily hidden—sad movies and tragic novels and heartbreak songs don’t look like traditional kinky porn.
Some people naturally gravitate to lovers who are sad or emotionally expressive. Dating an easy crier can be attractive to someone with a crying kink.
Read: How to Meet Kinky People
What Is Dacryphilia?
Put simply, dacryphilia is when people experience sexual arousal and pleasure from the act of someone crying.
The crying kink may include sexual excitement from tears, wet eyes, the puffy “crying” face, sad facial expressions, blowing the nose, wiping eyes, the muffled sounds of gentle crying, loud sobbing and weeping, the taste of tears and salty lips, the transformation through crying back to normal, comforting a person crying, making a person cry—a variety of these or all of the above.
While dacryphilia may seem fairly straightforward, if unusual, it’s actually quite a complex kink! There is a wide variety of complicated psychology going on here, and it’s very different for different people. One size does not fit all.
Read: Should You Disclose Your Kinks and Fetishes?
What Causes Dacryphilia?
While we generally don’t understand the nitty gritty about kinks, we do know that there are various kinds of imprinting, environmental factors, early exposure factors, and “mixed signal” factors—for example, if the first person someone was attracted to was a bossy brunette who cried all the time, that person may be frequently drawn to similar characteristics. But the picture is not so simple.
Psychologists used to believe that BDSM kinks for example were ways of re-enacting abuse scenarios on one’s own terms, but that is only true for some people and not for others.
What we do know is most humans are sexual beings throughout their whole lives, and humans are inherently creative and imaginative. That combination means an unlimited tapestry of expression.
With dacryphilia, some people are experiencing a kind of emotional BDSM—the power to make someone cry or to inflict pain is exciting.
For other crying fetishists, it’s about rescuing and soothing and nurturing that excites. Others with a crying fetish simply get turned on by tears and couldn’t tell you why.
Read: The BIG List of Kinks: 120+ Fetishes Explained
Why Do People Enjoy Crying Kink?
Let’s dive into a few possible illuminations into why some people might engage in dacryphilia. There are a few different things going on.
Power Exchange Dynamics
The power to control others or to inflict pain on them is sexually arousing for many of us. Making someone cry is evidence of this power.
Read: BDSM and Total Power Exchange Relationships
Cathartic Release
Having a good cry is cathartic, and for some it feels like watching someone cry is like watching them have an orgasm.
Body Fluids
Body fluids are deeply private and most of us feel a natural repulsion to other people’s saliva, blood, mucus, semen, and other excretions—except when we don’t—all of these are fetishes for some people.
Read: Spit Fetish: Salivating Over Saliva
Tears are a body fluid, and for some with dacryphilia, that’s what does it for them.
Profound Emotional Intimacy
Witnessing someone cry usually coincides with deeply personal life events and emotions, and it’s not something you share every day. This intimacy can be experienced as something private and sexual.
Read: 4 Ways BDSM and Kink Can Build Intimacy
Vulnerability
People who are crying are vulnerable and that can be an incredible turn on, in the context of BDSM or emotionally.
Rescue Complex
Soothing someone, being needed, nurturing a soul in distress, helping someone, and being compassionate to them is a kind of power. The empathy in it may also feel like love and a person with a crying fetish might experience it that way.
Read: 5 Kinds of Mommy Fetishes and Kinks
Orgasm Face
The crying face is not so far removed from the face someone makes when they have an orgasm. It is possible that the crying fetish, for some, is linked to this fact.
Guttural Sounds
The moaning, groaning, panting, and heavy breathing sounds are also familiar in another context!
Read: How the 5 Senses Affect Our Kinks and Fetishes
Different Forms of Dacryphilia
As with other kinks and fetishes, the very specific crying kink breaks down into many kinds of crying kinks! Someone with a crying fetish may enjoy several or all but most have very particular tastes and manifestations of their crying kink.
1. Active vs Passive Dacryphilia
Although research on dacryphilia is sparse, those like Dr. Mark Griffiths who document kinks in human sexuality notice very different “types” when it comes to the crying fetish.
Active dacryphilia is when someone enjoys inflicting the pain that makes someone cry as part of the crying fetish.
Passive dacryphilia is when someone does not derive pleasure from making someone cry—just from the crying itself.
2. Sadistic Dacryphilia
When it comes to those who take pleasure in someone else’s pain, and in causing it, for their own sexual excitement, we might say they are sadistic.
Read: 13 BDSM Torture Methods and Ways to Play
3. Dacryphilia in D/s Play
As in any other BDSM kink, someone with a crying kink may be a sadist but only in a consensual and mutually fulfilling power exchange. Dominance and submission play can include crying and be a powerful, mutually cathartic sexual and emotional scene.
D/S play does not have to be sadomasochistic, however. Dacryphilia can involve maternal kinks, rescue kinks, medical kinks, and all kinds of fetishes or psychological roles and role play that are about power and nurture in a variety of ways.
Read: BDSM Ideas: The BIG List of BDSM Play
4. Voyeuristic Dacryphilia
For some people with a crying fetish, it is pure voyeurism that excites. Looking at a private, emotionally raw scene is where the excitement and arousal comes in.
Read: Consensual Voyeurism: Be a Voyeur with Consent
5. Compassionate Dacryphilia
For some people, the natural emotional response to seeing someone cry is the source of their erotic attraction. The natural tendency to empathize when someone is upset triggers an immediate bond that is profound and can feel incredibly sexual.
6. The Curling Lip/ Mouth Expression
Most of us don’t feel sexy when we’re crying. But some find the very specific expressions and movements of the mouth erotic.
Read: Mouth Fetish: 10 Mouth Play Kinks and Ideas
Dr. Griffiths notes that the detail of the curling lip is very intense for some—the whole crying kink for them is based on sexual excitement for the shape and structure of the lips while crying. Quite a few people on crying kink forums report that it is this specific detail that drives them mad with desire.
Do you have a crying fetish? Tell us what it’s all about for you.
Tell us what you think