October 4, 2013
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Your fantasies are always with you, playing hide-and-seek with your perceived realities, whispering wild ideas into your inner ear, showing movies in your mind, stirring your passions mysteriously, yet so powerfully. If you are imprisoned in any way–by your work, your family, your education, your religion, your government–your fantasies become your freedom. Sometimes your ability to fantasize is the only freedom you have.
Where does fantasy end and reality begin? The English philosopher John Richter said, “Fantasy rules over two-thirds of the universe, the past and the future, while reality is confined to the present.”
Fantasy–the original “theater of the mind”–makes up a huge portion of human consciousness. Memory, as it filters through the mind’s eye, is a kind of fantasy that gazes backward, into the past. Hope, anticipation, fear and ambition are fantasies that look toward the future. Our sexuality is fueled by fantasies of the past and the future, as well as “pure” fantasies–wild dreams that never happened and that you never really want to have happen–that haunt and stimulate you like a kinky parallel universe.
A sexual fantasy can be a long, complicated story, a quick mental flash of erotic imagery or something in between. Whatever form it takes, it arouses your sexual feelings. As such, your favorite fantasy is the G-spot of your mind.
Experts agree that sexual fantasies are important, powerful and pervasive. But they can’t agree on much more about them. For every study that concludes that women or men fantasize one way, there’s another that concludes the opposite. If you look hard enough, you can find a study to prove any theory about sexual fantasies and another one to disprove it. Maybe this is because it is very difficult to measure fantasies except through questionnaires, and it is so easy and tempting to lie on questionnaires, especially when it comes to opening up about our deepest, darkest, most embarrassing, secret, sexual fantasies. Therefore, I will not use many studies to justify my points here. As a sex therapist with one of the largest private practices in the world and a sex-oriented radio and TV talk show host for over two decades, as well as an erotically-married woman for almost 18 years, I base my observations on my own professional and personal experience, which I believe is as good a “study” on fantasy as any.
Before we discuss where your secret fantasies come from and whether or not to share them with anyone, let’s take a look at some of the most common ones.
1. The Perfect Lover
The most popular sexual fantasies among men and women involve images of sex with a passionate, attractive, exciting partner who will do whatever you want, even if that means dominating you. Your Perfect Lover could be someone you know; it could even be your real-life partner. It could be someone you saw in class or at work but never talk to, a celebrity with whom you feel a connection, or a complete stranger you happened to face for two intense minutes in a crowded elevator. It could be someone that would be your ideal mate, if only you could be together. Or it could be someone very taboo: a relative, your best friend’s spouse, a “bad” boy or girl, someone of whom you know your family would disapprove. Perfect Lovers run the gamut, but the universal characteristic is that you find this person irresistible and extremely satisfying, at least in fantasy.
Even very traditional ladies who prefer romance to porn enjoy the fantasy of the Perfect Lover. While such a scenario might involve nothing more than kissing, Perfect Lover fantasies can entail sexual intercourse in every position. Oral sex (giving or receiving) is a big favorite, followed by manual sex, anal sex (giving or receiving) and mutual masturbation. In addition to these basic physical sex acts, there are many other types of sex about which you might fantasize, especially if you feel deprived of a particular favorite activity. Your Perfect Lover will never deprive you…unless you have a deprivation fetish.
Copyright: AlterNet