So how do you call a person only attracted by balloons?

[Asclepio]

So if one person doesn’t turn one by anything and ONLY and I mean really just Balloons............... it is still a fetish? Or it is called different?

[TheMole]

Re: So how do you call a person only attracted by balloons?

It’d be a paraphilia at that point. Depending on whether or not it effects the person negatively it could possibly be considered a mental illness.

[Common Loon]

Re: So how do you call a person only attracted by balloons?

The diagnostic manual (DSM-5) agrees with your last point: it doesn't rise to the level of a psychiatric *disorder* unless it impairs normal social/behavioral/professional function.

On the first point, I think it's the other way around: Paraphilias is a broader category than fetishes. Paraphilia means, essentially, "intense sexual attraction to something beyond actual, consensual, genital stimulation." Basically, "finding something besides sex to be intensely sexy." I'd wager that that includes all of us on this forum

Fetish is a narrower category within paraphilia: fetish means a "repetitive use, or reliance, on specific objects or specific nonsexual body parts to create sexual arousal." It seems like this would be the category you're asking about -- someone who *needs* balloons to get aroused, who can't function sexually without them, would be defined as a balloon fetishist, clinically speaking.

Of course, in the popular culture the word "fetish" is used by most people to mean what "paraphilia" means to clinicians. Most "balloon fetishists" do experience typical sexual function without balloons, for example, but the word has taken on the colloquial meaning that matches the clinical definition of paraphilia instead.

[Dust of the Saturn]

Re: So how do you call a person only attracted by balloons?

i think that person would be classified as an asexual person with a balloon fetish. much like the grim looner.

[StretchEmerald]

Re: So how do you call a person only attracted by balloons?

i think that person would be classified as an asexual person with a balloon fetish. much like the grim looner.

Agreed – I know a fair few ace people with fetishes, and balloons certainly don't seem unthinkable there.

[scamper]

Re: So how do you call a person only attracted by balloons?

Sounds like me. I am obsess with balloons, not others. I do fanicisze have a mate.

[LoonerHans]

Re: So how do you call a person only attracted by balloons?

Well I've met a lot of people who love balloons, popping them, blowing them, but they don't "enjoy" the way we do. I mean, their enjoyment is just for getting mental pleasure unlike us. We do for sexual pleasure.

If these people ever come to know abt our fetish, either they feel disgusted or would be curious to know more. A very thin chance of them becoming a looner though.