Sexual fantasies: what they mean and whether to share them with your partner

“If he knew what I sometimes think about, he’d never look at me the same way again.”

The woman who said this had been living with her partner for twelve years. They had children, shared friends, a good relationship. And she had a thought she was sure set her apart from him — an image that sometimes crept into her mind when they were together, and that she had never told anyone about. She had no wish to act it out. What troubled her was that it made her feel dirty, unfaithful and a little strange.

Sexual fantasies are one of the subjects almost all of us keep quiet about, even though almost all of us have them. In this piece I will try to explain what research tells us about them, what a fantasy means and what it does not mean, why they so often make us feel ashamed, and how — if you decide to — you can talk about them with your partner without the relationship suffering for it.

Almost all of us have them

In the mid-1990s, the psychologists Harold Leitenberg and Kris Henning reviewed the research on sexual fantasies available at the time and reached a conclusion that later studies have only confirmed: the great majority of adults, men and women alike, have sexual fantasies. They come up during masturbation, during sex with a partner, and quite casually, in the middle of the day. Men on average mention them more often and are somewhat more visual in them, but the differences between the sexes are smaller than you might expect.

In his book Tell Me What You Want (2018), the social psychologist Justin Lehmiller presented a survey in which he asked more than 4,000 Americans about their fantasies. Almost all of them reported having fantasies, and most revolved around a handful of recurring themes: novelty and adventure, passion and romance, power and control, the forbidden, multiple partners, and a flexibility that does not stick to the usual roles. Some caution is warranted: this was an online survey of volunteers in one country, not a representative sample. But the picture it paints matches other research: fantasies are not the exception, they are the rule.

In Canada, the researcher Christian Joyal and his colleagues asked around one and a half thousand adults which fantasies they had, and then looked at which were actually rare. Very few turned out to be genuinely rare. Much of what people experience as their shameful secret is in fact fairly common.

A fantasy is not a wish to act

The most important distinction, and one worth making at the outset: a fantasy is not a plan. Imagining something does not mean you want to experience it, let alone that you should do it.

A fantasy takes place in a space where you are completely in control. You can stop it, change it or rewind it at any time. There are no consequences in it, no other people with feelings of their own, and no body that might tire or become afraid. That is exactly why a fantasy can contain things that in reality would be unpleasant, dangerous or simply impossible.

This matters especially with fantasies involving a loss of control or submission. These are quite common among women, and the researchers who have studied them — Joseph Critelli and Jenny Bivona, for example — stress that they in no way signal a wish for real violence. In the fantasy, the woman is the one who writes the script. She has full control over not having control. In real violence, that is precisely what is taken from her.

Of course, fantasy and desire sometimes overlap. There are fantasies a person would like to try, and that is entirely legitimate. But that is a separate decision, not something that follows of its own accord. Most fantasies stay where they are — in your head — and do their job there.

What fantasies can tell us

If a fantasy is not a literal wish, then what is it? In his book The Erotic Mind, the therapist Jack Morin suggested that fantasies are a kind of condensed picture of the emotional themes that arouse a person. What matters is not so much what happens on the surface of the fantasy, but what the person feels in it: intensely desired, finally able to let go, seen, free, no longer needing to control anything.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, it is precisely this layer that interests us. A fantasy can be a window onto needs a person does not voice in everyday life. Someone who spends all day looking after everyone around them — children, parents, colleagues — may have fantasies in which they are the one being looked after, or in which they do not have to decide anything. Someone who feels overlooked in their relationship may have fantasies in which they are the centre of attention. Someone who grew up in a family where it was not allowed to talk about the body and pleasure may have fantasies about the forbidden — because practically everything was forbidden.

This reading is not a rule and does not apply to every fantasy. Sometimes a fantasy is just a fantasy, an image that turned up after a film or a conversation. But when the same theme keeps returning for years, it is worth asking: what does this story give me that I do not otherwise get? The answer is often more emotional than sexual.

The shame that follows a fantasy

For many people the problem is not the fantasy itself but what comes after it: “What’s wrong with me that I even thought of that?” “How can I think this when I love my wife?” “Does this mean I’m really different from who I think I am?”

In their review, Leitenberg and Henning pointed to an interesting link: sexual difficulties are not associated with whether a person has fantasies, but more often with how guilty they feel about them. It is not the fantasy but the guilt and shame about it that weigh on a person’s sex life.

The distinction I describe in more detail in Guilt and shame are not the same — and the difference matters is useful here. Guilt is about what you have done. But for a thought that came into your head, you have done nothing. Shame goes deeper still — it does not say “I did something bad”, but “I am bad”. And fantasies are particularly fertile ground for shame, because they are hidden, intimate and impossible to check with anyone else. When we keep quiet about them, shame grows. You can read more about how this emotion works in Shame: the emotion that whispers “There is something wrong with me” and in the knowledge base under shame.

Another common source of shame is that a fantasy does not fit a person’s image of themselves or their values. A feminist has a fantasy of submission. A faithful husband imagines someone else. A person who considers themselves heterosexual has a same-sex fantasy. None of these proves that your image of yourself is false. A fantasy does not tell you who you are. It tells you what can happen in your imagination — and imagination is, by its nature, wider than life.

Should you share them with your partner?

There is no single answer to this question. Some couples share their fantasies and find a new closeness and playfulness in doing so. Others keep them to themselves and are content. Both are fine.

The researchers Sandra Byers and Stephanie Demmons found in couples that disclosing what you like and do not like sexually is linked to greater sexual satisfaction — partly directly, partly because both partners feel better in the relationship. That speaks in favour of openness. But disclosing your preferences is not the same as disclosing every fantasy. Privacy is not secrecy. Having an inner world that is yours alone is part of healthy autonomy in a relationship, not a betrayal.

Before you decide, it is worth asking yourself a few things:

• Why do you want to share it? Because you would like your partner to know you better? Because you would like to try something? Because you feel you have to? Or because you hope they will reassure you that you are not strange? Each of these reasons leads to a different conversation.
• What will your partner hear? A fantasy about another person can leave your partner feeling they are not enough. A fantasy you voice as “I want this” can create pressure.
• How safe is the relationship right now? If there is a lot of tension, mistrust or unspoken resentment between you, it is a poor moment for a vulnerable disclosure. The ground needs to be built first.
• Has your partner ever mentioned anything similar? Sometimes it is easier to start with a question about them than with a confession about yourself.

Openness about sex requires vulnerability — a willingness to show something that might be rejected. And vulnerability only makes sense where there is enough trust that the other person will receive it with care.

Exercise: how the conversation begins

If you decide you would like to talk about fantasies or wishes, this gradual path can help. You do not need to do all the steps in one evening — they can take weeks.

1. Choose a moment outside the bedroom. A conversation about sex is easier on a walk, in the car or over coffee than just before or after sex, when you are both more vulnerable and quicker to take things personally.
2. Start with what is good. “I love it when…” or “I remember when we…” puts the conversation on ground that is not criticism. Your partner will hear something new more easily if it does not sound like a complaint about the old.
3. Ask before you tell. “Have you ever thought about what you’d like more of?” Or: “Would you be open to us sometimes telling each other a fantasy — with no obligation to act it out?”
4. Use the yes – maybe – no list. Each of you fills it in alone, then you compare. Start with what you both marked “yes”. Talk about the “maybes”. Do not negotiate the “nos”.
5. End the conversation by asking how it felt. “How was it for you, talking about this?” That makes next time easier — and if one of you found it uncomfortable, it will be heard before it settles.

I write about how to talk about sex without accusations in How to talk to your partner about sex without blame. You will find the general principles of saying what you think without shaking the relationship in How to say what you think without the relationship falling apart.

When your partner shares a fantasy with you

The other side of the conversation is demanding too. When your partner confides a fantasy, all sorts of things can happen: surprise, excitement, embarrassment, jealousy, fear that you are not enough. These are all understandable reactions. What matters is what you do with them in the next few minutes.

A conversation like this might go as follows (composite, not a real person):

“There’s something I’d like to tell you, but I don’t know how you’ll take it.”
“Go on.”
“Sometimes I imagine we’re somewhere nobody knows us. That we’re completely different people.”
Silence. “So I’m not enough for you?”
“No. I think it’s exactly because… I don’t know. At home we’re always Mum and Dad. I miss it being just the two of us.”
“Oh.” A longer silence. “That I understand. I miss that too.”

Something typical happens in this short conversation. A fantasy that at first sounded like a threat (“you’re not enough for me”) turns out to express a need they both share. That does not always happen. But it happens more often than when a fantasy stays unspoken and the partner one day “discovers” it at a far less safe moment.

If your partner confides a fantasy in you, a few things help:

• Do not laugh or recoil. Even if you feel awkward. Mockery at a moment like that is remembered for a long time.
• Be curious before you judge. “What is it about that you enjoy?” often reveals an emotional core that is easier to understand than the image itself.
• You have the right to say no. Listening to a fantasy does not mean agreeing to it. “Thank you for telling me. I wouldn’t want to try that, but I’m glad I know.”
• Say how it is for you. If something hurt, say so — calmly, as information, not as an accusation.

Where this does not apply

Everything I have written rests on the assumption that fantasies are a harmless part of inner life. For the vast majority of people that is true. But there are circumstances in which the answer lies elsewhere.

Intrusive thoughts are not fantasies. Some people experience recurring sexual thoughts or images that they do not want, that horrify them and that they try every way they can to push away. A thought like this does not arouse but disturbs, and it brings anxiety, not pleasure. It can be a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it is worth consulting a doctor, psychiatrist or clinical psychologist. Intrusive thoughts do not mean that a person is dangerous, but they are a source of great suffering.

When you are tempted to harm someone. If you have fantasies that involve harming others or sex with minors, and you feel you might act on them, seek professional help straight away — from your GP or a psychiatrist. This is not a subject for self-help or for a conversation with your partner. The professionals who work with this are bound by confidentiality and help to prevent anyone from being harmed.

When a fantasy becomes a means of pressure. “If you love me, you’ll do this” is not sharing a fantasy, it is coercion. A fantasy that one partner forces on the other has nothing to do with closeness.

When fantasies and pornography take over your life. If you feel that fantasies, or watching content to feed them, get in the way of work, relationships or sleep and you cannot cut back, read Pornography addiction: what we know and what is still contested.

Physical difficulties belong with a doctor first. If sex is not going the way you would like — it is painful, desire is absent, the body does not respond — the causes may also be physical or linked to medication. Consult a gynaecologist, urologist or your GP first.

How this comes up in couples therapy

I am not a sexologist or a sex therapist, and people do not come to couples therapy in order to reveal their fantasies. They come because something in the relationship is stuck — and intimacy is often one of the themes that opens up along the way. Sometimes it emerges that one partner has for years been hiding something they were ashamed of, and that this hiding has built a silent wall. Sometimes it emerges that a couple cannot talk about sex at all, because every conversation turns into self-defence. When partners differ in how much sex they want, this is often intertwined with fantasies — I write about that in When your desires don’t match: sex in a long relationship.

Therapy is not about anyone having to say anything. It is about creating a space safe enough for partners to tell each other, for the first time, something they have not dared to say before. And about learning to listen to each other even when they hear something they did not expect. Where there are sexual difficulties in the background that need specialist treatment, I refer you to a doctor or a specialist in sexual medicine. I also work with English-speaking couples, in person in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• The great majority of adults — men and women — have sexual fantasies. They are not the exception but the rule.
• A fantasy is not a wish to act. In your imagination you are fully in control; most fantasies stay there.
• What weighs on your sex life is less the fantasies themselves than the guilt and shame about them.
• Sharing fantasies with your partner is a choice, not an obligation. Privacy is not secrecy.
• Intrusive, unwanted thoughts or an urge to harm someone belong with a doctor or psychiatrist, not in self-help.