How Rare Are Your Sexual Fantasies?
My favorite study explored how rare and common sexual fantasies are and it turns out we have a lot more similarities than differences.
It’s strange.
We get so worked up over sex. We constantly question ourselves, wondering if we’re doing it right or if we’re weird. I know this was the majority of my adolescence. It took me thirty years to become comfortable in my skin when it came to my sexuality and, by the looks of things, that’s most people.
Even as adults, we have to hide our sexual selves away from prying eyes. People who are into BDSM have to resort to dungeons and clandestine hotels where they can live out their fantasies in anonymity.
If the neighbors like having threesomes with the pool boy, or if the woman next door is a size queen who quietly loves anal sex, that’s something the rest of the community isn’t likely to know—even though, statistically speaking, these kinds of fantasies are very common.
The Jerry Falwell Scandal proved that most of us are hushed kinksters hiding in plain sight.
Even fantasies about group sex, threesomes, and more, are much more common than we might think (I did a detailed explanation on why men enjoy watching their partners have sex with other people that can be found here).
For all the fuss we make about sex, especially the things considered “fantasies” and “fetishes” we’re a lot more alike than we are different.
I find it funny that we walk around keeping the kinkier parts of our lives quiet from everyone else (understandably) as if this part of our lives is some super rare thing, but everyone else is doing the exact same thing we’re doing.
From Rare to Well Done
A 2014 study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine sought to discover which of our sexual fantasies are unusual and which ones were commonplace.
Some findings were fascinating. I’ve covered some findings from this study in these stories:
Threesomes: The Vast Gulf Between Sexual Fantasy and Sexual Reality
Study Finds Women Significantly More Interested in Groupsex Than Men
The study included 1,516 adults and asked them to pick which fantasies they had out of 55 possible answers. Respondents were allowed to fill in their own fantasies as well, in case something wasn’t covered.
Researchers then broke down the fantasies into four categories:
Rare (shared by 2.3% of people)
Unusual (shared by 15.9% of people)
Common (shared by at least 50% of people)
Typical (shared by over 84% of people)
Then, researchers divided each by sex to see what was rare for males and what was rare for females.
So…
How rare do you think your fantasies are?
Just a heads-up before you go any further: some of these might trigger some uncomfortable feelings for some readers…
Rare Fantasies
Let’s start with the rare ones, only two sexual fantasies made the list: bestiality (2.2% of people) and pedophilia (1.8% of people).
This means that literally every single other fantasy under the sun doesn’t fall into the “rare” category.
People are more likely to share your sexual fantasy than your mental illness in almost all cases.
Unusual Fantasies
Nine total fantasies fell into the “unusual” category, meaning they were shared by 15.9% of participants or fewer. Seven fantasies are rare for women and four fantasies are rare for men.
For women:
urinating on a partner, 3.5%
being urinated on, 3.5%
wearing clothes of the opposite gender, 6.9%
forcing someone to have sex, 10.8%
abusing a person who is drunk, asleep, or unconscious, 10.8%
having sex with a prostitute, 12.5%
having sex with a woman who has very small breasts, 10.8%
For men:
urinating on a partner, 8.9%
being urinated on, 10.0%
having sex with two other men, 15.8%
having sex with more than three other men, 13.1%
Typical Fantasies
Typical fantasies were shared by 84.1% of people according to the study. These are the fantasies almost everyone had and, as could be expected, they’re pretty vanilla.
Those are:
feeling romantic emotions during a sexual relationship
fantasies where atmosphere and location are important
and fantasies involving a romantic location
receiving oral sex
having sexual intercourse with two women (men only)
Common Fantasies
Everything that didn’t fall into these categories is considered “common” which is the second-largest category of sexual fantasies. The category was so large, it would take forever to cover all the kinks individually, so I’ll discuss two really intriguing finds and let you know why they stood out to me.
First, both sexes were very interested in BDSM, though women were slightly more into BDSM.
Women:
being sexually dominated, 64.6%
being tied up for sexual pleasure 52.1%
being spanked or whipped 36.3%
and being forced to have sex 28.9%
Men:
being sexually dominated, 53.3%
being tied up for sexual pleasure 46.2%
being spanked or whipped 28.5%
and being forced to have sex 30.7%
The other interesting part of the study was how surprisingly frequent homosexual fantasies were. Only 3.6% of the study participants identified as “definitely homosexual” while 12.6% of women and 9.8% of men identified as bisexual.
3.5% of the American population identified as LGBT back in 2014, when the study was conducted.
35.7% of women reported fantasizing about giving cunnilingus to another woman
36.9% of women fantasized about having sex with (or making love with) another woman
42.4% of women fantasized about watching two women have sex
Interestingly, among these women, still, only 12.6% identified as bisexual and 6% identified as homosexual. The vast majority of these fantasies were carried out by women who identified as heterosexual.
When it comes to men, the numbers were not quite so extreme, but they were close:
26.8% of men fantasized about giving fellatio
20.6% of men fantasized about having sex with another man
Among these men, 89.5% identified as heterosexuals.
Wrapping it Up…
It’s crazy how our culture has shunned sex to the point where we feel like we’re the only ones with our unique fantasies, preferences, and desires. But the more we learn about sex and sexuality, the more we begin to realize that we have a lot more similarities than we do differences. We’re just led to believe, through shame and the long hangover from centuries of anti-sex religions, that our sexuality is deviant, unusual, and thus something to keep quiet.
This old order that maintained the silence is finally starting to break down, and it’s a beautiful thing to watch.
So, are your fantasies rare, unusual, common, or typical?
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Three books I recommend checking out:
Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships
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