We all have them. We all enjoy them. We all hide them. Sexual fantasies. Our dirty little “not so secret” secret. Men and women alike entertain our own individual fantasies…those things that turn us on, rev our engines, send our hearts to racing, our body temps to rising, and our drawers to dropping. Of course, these fantasies vary from person to person … but, generally speaking, men have extremely visual and sexually explicit fantasies, while women tend to fantasize about the titillating seduction, foreplay, and romance. Summed up, men enjoy the act…women, more the chase. Sexual fantasies, because they always have been, and always will be, based in fiction, mean big bucks to those willing to serve up that fiction to us on the silver platter of our choice—whether it be via dirty magazines, sex toys, romance novels, or romantic movies dripping with unrequited love. Fantasy plays a role in any normal sexual appetite. Accept it, embrace it, enjoy it. The trick is remembering that fantasy is just that … it’s fiction. How do we manage to enhance our relationship with our fantasies …without allowing those fantasies to distort our expectations of our reality?
Why is porn so sought after by men? Because men fantasize in the same manner as they do anything else: directly and to the point. They are turned on visually, and they are goal-oriented. They fantasize about the act of sex itself, the visual eye candy, the sweaty bodies “getting it on,” the sex without the hassle … this should come as no surprise to women. Men are extremely direct and focus on the destination, with little patience for the long, tedious roads and pit stops along the way. Women, on the other hand, fantasize about the romance, the chase, the moments leading up to the big finale. They tend to be more subtle, pay more attention to detail, and have a much more complicated sexual “rubik’s cube” extremely difficult for men to figure out … but when they do …oh, the possibilities. Women are captivated by the sultry, steamy, erotic romance novels because they focus on the chase, the act of falling in love, the flirty glances and provocative touches, the intoxicatingly close proximity of two bodies ready to explode with passion. Could men and women be more opposite?
Because our fantasies are so different, we have very different ways of indulging in them. Men have their porn. Women have their romance novels and chick flicks. Porn is more direct. Romance novels and movies, more subtle and “innocent,” wouldn’t you say? But even with all of their differences, they serve the same purpose to us: to turn us on and get our juices flowing. Are romance junkies really any different from porn junkies? Aren’t women’s romance novels the equivalent of men’s porn? Both fulfilling our secret fantasies, both giving us what our reality may be lacking, both filling our heads with sex and romance that doesn’t exist in our realities?
Our fantasies can be beneficial to our sex lives—keeping us feeling lively, vital, sexy, desirable, and young. All good things, right? Sharing our desires, our daringly taboo fantasies, with our spouses can heat up our love lives. No one enjoys a hum-drum/twice a month/two possible positions/only in the bed sex life. Do they? This lack of fantasy will leave your sex life “dead in the bed.” Be open-minded and daring. After all, you vowed to be faithful to only one person—have fun with it.
There can, however, be a dark side to these fantasies. Pornography is completely fictional. Never will a man walk into a house delivering a pizza and be greeted by three naked, buxom blondes complaining about a lack of “sausage” on their pizza. These women are often times the masterpiece of a plastic surgeon—recreated from head to toe. Playboy is filled with pictures of women who don’t truly exist. They’re merely a face pasted on a digitally enhanced image. Real women could never, under any circumstances, live up to, or recreate, these fantasies. They’re fictional entertainment. As long as men understand this, it remains fairly harmless. However, some men begin to blur the line between fantasy and reality. When he is no longer attracted to real women due to his media-induced delusion of the way women should look and behave, the fantasy has gone horribly awry. No relationship can survive this kind of delusion. He will be forever alone, as he will never find an actual human female who can “stack” up.
The same is true for women. We sometimes allow our romance novels and movies to distort our reality. We wonder why our over-worked, over-stressed husbands aren’t as attentive and romantic as our leading man. We wonder why he doesn’t hang on our every word anymore. We want him to sweep us away, to obsess over us, to flirt shamelessly with us. Basically we want to perpetually feel the high of new love. But, of course, we have about as much hope of this as he has of coming face to face with the porn vixen. Reality sucks, huh? So, we complain about the lack of romance in our relationship. Why? Because the media has instilled in us the version of a relationship that doesn’t exist—just as the media has instilled in men the version of the ever-horny Barbie doll that doesn’t exist. Tit for tat.
Our fantasies are normal, healthy, and here to stay. We can acknowledge them, accept them, own them, and use them to our advantage—as long as we realize that it’s not reality—only an escape to help us enhance our reality. A complete lack of fantasy can suffocate a sex life quicker than a live-in mother-in-law. A healthy amount of fantasy can keep a sex life hopping (maybe literally). But too much fantasy can distort, and consequently, destroy our reality. In the end, that distortion will leave both parties feeling unsatisfied and alone.
We color our hair, exercise, tan our bodies, so on and so on. Why? We need those things to make us feel young and hot. Our sex lives need fantasy and variety for the same reason. To stay hot! The trick is to balance our fantasy with our reality.
Find your balance. Find your sweetie. Find your sex life.
