Note: we are republishing this story which originally made the news in June 2016.
An Atlanta woman says she’s taken time off from her job as a bartender to breastfeed her boyfriend every two hours in an attempt to create “a magical bond that only breastfeeding can achieve.”
Jennifer Mulford’s arrangement with 36-year-old boyfriend Bread Leeson isn’t unique, according to the Sun, and it’s part of what’s known as an adult breastfeeding relationship (ABR). Sex Within Marriage contains a whole page dedicated to the practice which says men “report feeling calmed and soothed” by breastfeeding, and says it “seems to promote bonding in the relationship.”
Mulford said she wasn’t familiar with ABR until she stumbled across it online.
“When I read about the bond breastfeeding could create between two people, I was envious,” she told the Sun. “I have always enjoyed my breasts being touched during sex more than anything else, so I knew I would enjoy it.”
She searched online to find a partner who was looking to start an ABR relationship, according to the newspaper, but struck out with personal ads, profiles on dating sites and even posts on Craigslist. That’s when she began speaking to Leeson, an ex-boyfriend from her school days.
“We were talking and Brad told me he had a thing for big-breasted women, and that size had always been a factor in his relationships,” Mulford said. “I thought it was the perfect time to bring up adult breastfeeding — and see if he’d be interested.”
It was “like a light switch flicked in [Leeson’s] head,” Mulford said. Before long, Leeson was doing his own research on ABR.
“At that moment I knew that I had a partner for life,” Mulford said. “We both wanted the same thing out of the relationship — a magical bond that only breastfeeding can achieve.”
Mulford said it’s been 20 years since she gave birth and last breastfed, and said the process involves pumping and dry feeding to get her body to begin producing milk.
In a 2012 Reddit “Ask Me Anything” thread, a woman in an adult breastfeeding relationship answered users’ curious questions, and insisted the practice is “not infantilism.” The woman, posting under the online handle “sassymilkmaid,” explained that “it’s both sexual and emotional” for her boyfriend.
“To each their own,” she wrote, “but there are far stranger fetishes out there.”