Education - Fantasies

Fantasy

First of all, don't worry. Almost everybody - male and female, young and old, prudish and promiscuous - has sexual fantasies. And surprisingly often these fantasies involve things that (in real life) would be considered unusual, unnatural and maybe even illegal. "Although once regarded as symptoms of emotional, sexual and psychological disturbance ... sexual fantasies now are widely recognized as positive forms of erotic expression," one team of sex researchers recently observed.

The mind, after all, is the body's most fertile erogenous zone. Without sexual fantasies, sex itself may seem sterile, mechanical and uninteresting. In fact, it's been discovered that sexually dysfunctional men and women rarely have erotic fantasies during foreplay, sexual intercourse or masturbation. And people who suffer from what are known as hypoactive desire disorders (lack of interest in sex) also seldom unreel torrid movies in their minds. These people may consciously squelch such thoughts because they feel guilty or embarrassed about them, or they may simply not have them at all. As part of their cure, many sex therapists actually help these self-censored folks unleash the erotic potential of their minds by teaching them how to fantasize. Some women who've never had an orgasm, in fact, are able to become orgasmic simply by allowing themselves to indulge in their erotic fantasies during sex.

Fantasy as Reality

Sexual fantasies are without doubt the most common kind of human sexual experience - and sometimes they're so vivid, and so steamy, that they hardly qualify as "fantasies" at all. It's now believed that about 1 percent of women can actually bring themselves to orgasm through fantasy alone - without touching themselves, or being touched, at all. At a recent conference of sex educators and therapists, Beverly Whipple, R.N., Ph.D., a sex researcher at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, presented a study of ten such women. Under laboratory conditions - despite the extraordinary unsexiness of being wired up and monitored by a crowd of researchers - seven out of ten of these women had a bona fide climax, solely through the erotic use of their minds.

Functions of Fancy

Sexual fantasies can serve a variety of purposes. One of the most common, reported by 71 percent of men and 72 percent of women in   one recent study, is to heighten sexual arousal. "One of the most frequent patterns we have encountered is the use of a particularly treasured fantasy to move from the plateau phase of arousal," say William Masters, M.D., and Virginia Johnson, of the Masters and Johnson Institute in St. Luis. "Some men and women report that they are unable to be orgasmic unless they use fantasy this way."

Sex fantasies, because they're completely safe and completely private, also allow you a way to let your sexual feelings out for an uninhibited romp. You can explore all sorts of sexual situations - and have all sorts of sex partners - without being held personally accountable. (In one study of college students, over 30 percent of the men admitted that in a lifetime of erotic fantasizing, they'd had sexual "encounters" with over a thousand partners.) You can release pent-up sexual pressures and tensions harmlessly. And you can "preview" an anticipated sexual activity, partly as a way to diffuse your fears, partly to rehearse the scene m advance and troubleshoot potential problems. Adolescents often use fantasy this way.

Far-Out Fantasies

One thing that's important to remember, though: Just because you fantasize about something doesn't mean you'd actually want to do it, even if you could. Fantasizing about, say, a homosexual encounter, or bondage, may be away of discharging your fears, or perhaps just your curiosity, about such practices. And it's fairly well known that some women fantasize about being raped - but that doesn't mean they are actually longing to be forced into having sex. (Nancy Friday, a writer who spent nearly a decade investigating men's and women's sex fantasies, suggests in her book Forbidden Flowers that often women who have rape fantasies grew up in sexually repressed households and that, for them, the fantasy of being "taken" by an overpowering male is often the only acceptable way to allow themselves to be sexual.)

Studies at the Masters and Johnson Institute have shown that women who have "unusual" fantasies (of being raped, of having sex with animals, of sadomasochistic sex) have no interest in actually doing these things. But interestingly enough, about two-thirds of the men who were interviewed for these studies said they might want to try out their fantasies, if given the chance.

Sometimes, of course, bizarre sex fantasies do get out of control. People may become compelled to act out strange fantasies or become so obsessed with a fantasy that their flesh-and-blood partners fade into unimportance. Experts say' one hallmark of real trouble (what's now known as a paraphilia, or perversion) is when a person finds himself compelled to bring a specific, aberrant fantasy to mind, every time, in order to become sexually aroused or have orgasm.

How Men and Women Differ

How do men's erotic fantasies differ from women's? A variety of studies have shown that our sexual imaginations are almost as different as our bodies. For one thing, men have sex fantasies far more frequently than women do - about twice as often, according to most studies. (There's interesting evidence that all sex fantasies are tied to androgens, or male sex hormones, which trigger the libido in both men and women but are far more prevalent in men.) According to one review of the literature on sex fantasy, other generalizations can also be made. Men's fantasies tend to be dominated by visual images, especially genital images, are more likely to involve multiple, often anonymous partners, are more active and aggressive and move more quickly to explicitly sexual acts. Women's fantasies, by contrast, are more personal, often focusing specifically on someone they actually know, emphasize touching, feeling and emotions, unfold more slowly and tend to include more caressing and non-genital touching.

Sound suspiciously familiar? Well, it doesn't end there. Bruce J. Ellis of the University of Michigan and Donald Symons, Ph.D., of the University of California, Santa Barbara, note that men's and women's erotic fantasies are also mirrored almost perfectly in the literature of erotic fantasy: male - oriented pornography and female -oriented romance novels. Pornography is highly visual, highly explicit and focuses on "sheer lust and physical gratification, devoid of encumbering relationships." Romance novels, by contrast, are primarily love stories - a woman's personal, emotional search to "identify and marry the one right man who win remain hers for the rest of her life." There is very little overlap in the fantasy worlds depicted by these two genres, just as there is almost no market for male - oriented romance novels or hard - core pornography for women.

Ah, sex and the sexes! Will we ever understand each other?

Should You Share?

Should you share your sex fantasies with your partner? Well, it all depends. Masters and Johnson report that many people find that when they share their spiciest fantasy with a partner, somehow the whole thing just fizzles. Actually acting out fantasies can be disappointing, too; sometimes the thrill lies in its secrecy and the fact that reality doesn't intrude. You never get cold or un-comfortable or sticky, and you can stop it any time you like. Says Nancy Friday: "I think that for every person who has written to me about the joys of performing their sexual dreams in reality, there have been three or four who knew in advance that it wouldn't work or who tried it and were disappointed."

Still, what if you're one of the people who love it? You never know until you try. Sex therapist Lonnie Barbach, Ph.D., assistant clinical professor of medical psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, suggests that the two of you try spinning out a fantasy together Or imagine this one of you could spin out the story while the other provided the physical stimulation. Or you could try acting out a fantasy, such as going to a motel bar and pretending you've just met, having a little getting - to - know - you chitchat then going upstairs and making love as if for the first time.

Or you might want to try a sort of modified acting-out. One woman had fantasies of wild, passionate sex, so she and her husband would wear old T-shirts and rip them off each other during sex. What better proof could you get of the reality of fantasy than shreds of T-shirt scattered all over the bedroom floor?