I just read a “Get Naked” sex-advice column in Time Out New York, where a woman states that she gets off on fantasies of dirty old men. However she in no way finds dirty old men appealing in real life. She wonders if she’s some sort of nut.
Personally, I fantasize pretty often about activities (and people) I would NEVER do in real life. Like group sex, for example. Nothing really crazy sick, but often it’s stuff that I’d find uncomfortable, or even repulsive, in real life.
From discussions with some male lovers, it seems the opposite for them. They fantasize about things they would like to do and enjoy acting out their fantasies (or some version thereof) in partner sex. Thus, if I happen to reveal any of my fantasies to them, they mistakenly think I have some secret desire to do that in real life, and when I say I don’t, they think I’m being coy or something.
I’m wondering if this is a gender thing, or simply a difference between individuals. Anyone want to weigh in?
I can’t understand how you can fantasize about something that would repulse you in real life. I suspect there might be a little bit of embarrassment-denial going on there.
I can see it; in your fantasies you know everything is perfect and there’s never an awkward moment. Like the old man fantasy for example. Maybe in her fantasies, she’s turned on by the soft wrinkly hands and (assumed) gratitude but in real likfe, she knows she’d also have to deal with icky old guy smell and some cranky jerk.
Really? Never indulged in a daydream of doing bodily harm to some jerk who pissed you off, or something of that ilk? I’m not a violent person and I get sick watching people fight. Confrontation as a whole makes me deeply uncomfortable, but whoo! In my head I have a scathing turn of phrase and a killer right hook for people I don’t like. And yes, it feels good to think about those things even though I would NEVER punch someone in real life.
Similarly, I often fantasize about stuff that does repel me in real life. It’s my head, so why can’t I explore stuff that’s verboten? In real life, I like little hints of dom/sub stuff, but nothing remotely intense. However, the intense stuff plays a huge role in my fantasies. I know I couldn’t handle the emotional ramifications of a 3-way, too, but that doesn’t mean I won’t think about them. Like tremorviolet said, you can get dark or whatever in your fantasies because you know you’re really perfectly safe and not threatened by any change or harm.
It will be interesting to see if this is a gender thing or not.
Also, real life actions tend to have real life consequences. A fantasy about an encounter with your wife’s sister ends with nothing but pleasant feelings. Actually propositioning your wife’s sister is likely to end with years of guilt and anger. (And no, I luckily do not speak from experience. )
I’m a dude, and I certainly have fantasies I wouldn’t want to act out in real life. Some of my fantasies are frankly pretty out there. They’re things that I probably wouldn’t actually enjoy in real life, or wouldn’t want to deal with the consequences from. I’m not particularly a prude about what I’m willing to do in real life either - but in the comfort of my own skull, I can imagine activities that I just plain wouldn’t want in real life, or that are more intense than what I would enjoy in real life. This is probably particularly true for people with an interest in BDSM - I think a lot of people have fantasies about, say, being a 24/7 sex slave. But very few people would actually want that in real life; if you have any interests or goals in life that don’t have to do with sex, that fantasy is pretty much impossible to turn into reality.
Well the OP was more about sexual fantasies. If I think about what it would be like to punch somebody in the face, I would not say that I am fantasizing about committing acts of violence.
Inhibitions getting in the way of acting out fantasies isn’t the same thing as being repulsed by the acts themselves.
I guess I can’t relate because I have some pretty wild fantasies but they are all things I’d be able to handle if they actually happened IRL.
OK that one I can see. But such an act wouldn’t happen because of societal and marital rules and obligations, not because you would actually be repulsed by the act itself. If you happened to find yourself in bed with the sister do you think there would be a feeling of repulsion?
Not by the act itself, in a purely physical, completely of-the-moment sense. But that’s the thing about fantasies: they’re the only place you can completely isolate “the act itself” from the rest of your life. Even if you remove other people from the equation, the version of you that exists in the fantasy (i.e., a person who would proposition his wife’s sister) could be different from your real self.
I also don’t really see the distinction between the “I’d really like to shoot that jerk” fantasy and that “I’d really like to do Sexual Act X” fantasy.
Pretty much all of my sexual fantasies are pastiche – things I’ve done or reasonable extrapolations therefrom, involving my actual partners. Most of my sexual dreams are not structured enough to be fantasies; they’re … sensation-patterns, and that’s about it.
When I was younger (call it early adolescence) I had a lot of wilder fantasies, which have pretty much lost their appeal as I’ve gained experience (and, y’know, realism). The core stuff in those fantasies is stuff that I bring out to actually do in some form, because the weird fantasy universe was genuinely expressing desires, not completely divorced from what I wanted – just a bit separate from reality.
So it’s not a gender thing, unless I’m not a woman again. (I hate it when that happens.)
Or any fantasy really. I can fantasize about being a rock star or astronaut or whatever, and the fantasy works because I’m only imagining the cool parts and not the parts that don’t appeal to me.
To think of an example, I am not in the least bit interested in performing oral sex on another woman (sorry, fellas, not all ladies long to eat pussy despite what teh Internets tell you). Although I certainly have no problem with consenting adults doing the deed to their hearts’ content, trying to imagine myself doing it (or watching others do it in any kind of real-life situation) is repulsive. However, girl-on-girl action can be part of my fantasies.
It may make more sense if you know that it’s never me doing the so-called repulsive actions. Ever since I’ve starting having sexual fantasies, they have always been kind of like porno movies my brain makes up, with unrecognizable actors. I’m never involved either as participant or voyeur. In other words, I fantasize about other people having and enjoying all kinds of sex, including things I may or may not want to do in real life. Does that make more sense?
And, no, that doesn’t mean I hate sex or my body. I like both fine, thank you, so you armchair psychologists can back off.
The closest I can think of would be having an affair/cheating with all kinds of women I run across daily. Sure I like to fantasize about it but put in the situation I could never do it and I would be sickened by it. Not by the other woman but by myself for doing something so stupid and awful to my wife.
I had a fantasy for ages where I go to this farmer working away on a fence line or something - I bring him lunch and we do it in the hay barn (much detail cut out).
But I always laugh about it when I think what it would be like in real life. He would be smelly and sweating from working, probably a smoker and not so educated (going by the majority of farmers), his socks would stink, I don’t like cooking and the idea of flouncing off through the fields to bring lunch is just not me, I would be all muddy and dirty from walking through the fields, the fence line would probably be miles from the house, hay is scratchy on your skin, there are mice and rats in most hay barns etc etc…
Most of my fantasies except a few lately about a particular co-worker also involve made up people doing things I’d never do in real life. Some of those things would be horrifying to me if I knew real people who engaged in them. People who don’t even exist don’t hurt by things we imagine, though, so why feel guilty? I don’t.
)
