Can we change our sexual fantasies?
And why should we?
I once hooked up with a guy who wanted me to call him Daddy, and enjoyed role-playing scenarios of rape. At first, he didn’t tell me this, but I worked it out because it very much affected the way he had sex — he would want to spank me, be rough, pin me down. I’m into that stuff too — apart from the Daddy part because seriously where the fuck did that come from? — so it was alright for me, but I feel like he didn’t sufficiently seek to find out whether I was into it before doing quite rough things, which definitely need a check-in. He couldn’t talk about it, because he was too embarrassed by it. He didn’t want to own up to his own fantasies. The way he performed his fantasies in bed felt almost compulsive, his guilt reverberated out of him and gave a violence to his desire.
It got me thinking about sexual fantasies, and whether we have to learn to accept them, even when they make us uncomfortable. Even when our fantasies are things we don’t like about ourselves.
When I go on porn sites, I’m always amazed by the long list of “categories”. People have such incredibly diverse sexual fantasies, it is quite beautiful really. From mundane threesomes to sci-fi tentacle erotica. No fantasy is a bad fantasy. The actual issue is how we feel about them on the one hand, and how we act on the other. There is no…
