We almost all of us have sexual fantasies. For many, our fantasies are where we explore thrilling alternatives and imaginary additions to the sex lives we enjoy with our partners. Unconstrained, we are transported in our imaginations to experiences which feel wholly satisfying, where we are carried on the high road to orgasm, where the brain – our most important sexual organ – has what it needs to feel fully sexy and fully turned on.
Our fantasies can be exhilarating. Also, frequently, they are strange and even disturbing, such that we feel we could never admit to them. When we masturbate, we might have a favourite fantasy involving forced sex, or sex as a whore or a tacky porn star, or sex as or with an adolescent, or BDSM à la Fifty Shades Of Grey – which, by the way, leading supermarkets, bastions of all that is family-friendly, these days think it’s fine to promote. It can be beautiful to connect our fantasy sex life to our love life with our partners. To share a fantasy is to share something precious. It can make us feel closer, more intimately involved, and more alive.
To begin, it is worth articulating our fantasies to ourselves, and this when we are not masturbating. This is because, when we masturbate, we have already entered into an escapist, exhilarated, and more fully permissive state of mind; the thoughts we enjoy here can be apt to shut down just as soon as we’ve come, particularly if our fantasies are illicit.
Tell yourself the story of your fantasies when you are not (yet) aroused. Write it down, pen to paper – You could create a little fantasy diary in a special notebook. Put yourself within the story, as yourself or an imagined alter-ego. Use the present tense as you describe what is happening: ‘I am…’ Get comfortable and confident with where you take yourself when you are aroused. As you become more fully conscious of your needs, desires, and wishes, be kind to yourself as you ask what your fantasies say about you.
Your fantasies might, for example, express a need to surrender and to be overpowered. They might be nostalgic, or a way of resolving difficulties experienced in earlier life. They might reflect the allure of being thoroughly objectified and droolingly adored. Or maybe it’s a power-trip you’re on there – Is your inner dominatrix breaking free?
There is no right and wrong entailed in fantasy. Fantasies play beyond conventional morality, and as such can complete our sexual being and our sex lives. With a partner, we can draw on our fantasies as a vital force. It’s time to share.
In a comfortable and intimate moment, perhaps cuddling up after sex, when you’re both glowing, ask playful, gentle questions. Ask your partner about his or her fantasies. Be honest: ask what the thoughts are when he or she masturbates. What sets the scene? What is the initial arousal? And what’s the kicker? What takes your partner over the edge? What are the most intense thoughts?
Don’t expect a flood of information all at once! Maybe expect curiosity. And, moreover, you’ve opened the door to saying how you’d like to share your fantasies. Now your partner really should be curious! Check carefully your partner’s reactions, and perhaps start with the milder end of your fantasies. If things aren’t looking promising, perhaps after all it is not yet time to share.
Ask if your partner would like you to tell your fantasy story, the one you’ve written. Express a need for trust and emotional holding, and ask permission: ‘Let me tell you my fantasy.’ Tell your story, then kiss and embrace your partner closely, as if to include him or her in the story you’ve just told. Say: ‘I love you.’ One thing your partner might want to ask you now is: ‘Okay. What do I do?’
Perhaps the answer is: ‘Nothing. Just know.’ Just know that’s a part of your sexual backdrop, complementary to your sex life with your partner.
Or perhaps you’d like to start living out some aspects of your fantasies. Do be careful. There may be reasons your fantasies have been fantasies and not played in real life. You might, though, wish to try importing little elements of how things are in your fantasy life into your love life with your partner. It could just be a few role-play words, or maybe a piece of costume, or a few-minute ritual in which you adore one another, touch, caress, and express and release one another’s thoughts honestly. Echo your fantasies, with, for example, hand-cuffs or other light restraints, or with a pre-arranged call to the door by that porn-star plumber or hooker, when you’re straight from the bath!
Play the part of the other in your partner’s fantasies – and you can ask him or her to do the same. Describe what you are doing as you make love, as if you are the character in the fantasy. Sense how your partner responds. Play with it carefully, sensually, until there comes a point when there are no more words and it all becomes physical as you make love. This is an expression of great trust. As you share fantasies, things will move on. They won’t just be yours anymore; they’ll be your partner’s too. It’s a kind of communion. Your sex life can become more intimately involved with and focused around your partner than it was before.
