Dear NoraSverige
I agree with all that has been said above and also, having spent a lifetime addressing the question you have raised in your header, I can also give you my considered view.
It is long overdue that the word fetish should be consigned to the dustbin because it has gone through so many meanings. It started off as worshipping a material artifact in the absence of a material presence of the god you believed in. So adoring a Christian cross or fingering a set of rosary beads was a manifestation of a religious fetish. Then in the 19th C, it got attached to sex, especially worshipping clothing or other items worn by the adored person. It got a bad name when the adored person was inaccessible for whatever reason and the person who craved for her (usually it was a male who "confessed" to such deeds) stole the item to satisfy the craving.
I am in the process of writing a book in the evolution of the "fetish" displayed by people like me and most others in this forum. I have read all there is to be read by so-called expert psychologists going back over a hundred years and they are all wrong to some extent or other, including Krafft-Ebing, Freud and Havelock Ellis. None of these writers possessed what I call a predilection rather than a fetish and so they could not possibly understand it. They called themselves normal and so anyone who liked the drape, look and feel of, for example, a raincoat or a fur coat or a silk dress and made a sexual association, was defined to be abnormal and perverted because no normal person would excessively like a garment made from the juice of a rubber tree. Yet this definition was made purely on the basis that the person making it was "normal" despite the fact that they probably had a predilection for taking shredded vegetation from another plant, rolling it into a cylinder, sticking it in their mouth and setting setting fire to it.
Finally, no more than a couple or more years ago, the WHO finally removed "fetishism" from the classified list of mental illnesses, provided it was between consenting couples and did not lead to the person being deranged.
So what about the chap who has asked to borrow your raincoat? I can't say what is in his mind, but I do recall in my teens being afflicted by a passion for a girl in my village, D, and I desperately wanted to borrow her raincoat because it made her look sexy and desirable and although I couldn't take her home and sleep with her in those days, the thought of sleeping with her raincoat seemed to fill in the gaps till I was with her again. But I daren't ask her and she never knew. She went off with someone else and I pined. I met another girl, V, with an identical raincoat and felt salvation until I realised that it was her raincoat I wanted, to remind me of D, and not her. It was unfair to treat V this way so I backed off. So very early, I was able to separate the item from the person and want both, with the person always being more important.
Three years ago I met a woman and we both agree that had we met years ago we would have made a fantastic life together but it would hurt too many innocents if we tried to retrieve a lost life now. It took her a day to winkle out my predilection. She had known me for a while beforehand and knew there was something (attractively) different about me and was determined to find out what it was. When I told her it was raincoats and other clothes or rubber and latex, she embraced the notion with enthusiasm and said it made me more exciting and she wanted to experience it. She had always liked the touch of silk and now found out why -- it was a foretaste. To cut a long story short, she has a white linen shirt of mine which she wore the first time we fucked properly and she sleeps in it, because she has part of me around her and she feels simultaneously excited and content. She likes looking at the faint stain where our combined juices dribbled. She bought a latex skirt and wore it a few times before giving it to me. I cant sleep in it because it doesn't fit. But I sleep with it. We hand these garments back now and then to be refreshed and then have a serious fuck with them in the bed we share rarely.
So by all means lend your raincoat to your chap but make sure you ask him what he is going to do with it and then when you need it back because it is raining, ask him what he has been doing with it and also examine it for wear and tear. You might want to suggest that he can keep it if he buys you a brand new one of at least the same quality. Everything will be OK provided he appears to maintain his interest in you or even increases it. The whole business can become a superb addition, which is how I dealt with it when I realised that I was different and not "normal" I regarded it as an addition, something extra that I had over "normal" people, to whom I could now feel superior. Give it a try. And if he suggests he fancies fucking you whilst you wear the raincoat, give that a try. With the right approach it can enhance a relationship. There may be something that you like and can get him to do in return although don't make it look a trade. In a relationship, you do things absolutely and unconditionally. If he seems to fade away once her "owns" your raincoat then you have learnt something very important and can move on.
But the bottom line is,
and the answer to your question is:
Everybody is different and the right approach is to accept and enjoy the differences rather than make the other person be like you, because that way, life is boring.
PS I notice it is you, rather than him who came to this forum. Well done!
