What is your favorite sexual fantasy?
I asked 4,175 Americans this question as part of the survey that formed the basis for my book Tell Me What You Want. I gave people the opportunity to write out their favorite fantasies in their own words, and many went into great detail. I then looked for common themes in people's descriptions and found that seven broad categories emerged. These included:
1. Multipartner sex. Most often, this included things like threesomes, orgies, and gangbangs.
2. Power, control, and rough sex—anything falling under the umbrella of bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism (BDSM).
3. Novelty, adventure, and variety. This refers to doing something that is new and different for you, such as having sex in a new position or setting.
4. Taboo activities. This category involved doing something that you're not "supposed" to do when it comes to sex. A lot of fetish fantasies fell into this category, as well as other fantasies that psychologists have long deemed "paraphilic" (i.e., unusual).
5. Passion, romance, and intimacy. These fantasies involved meeting emotional needs through sex, such as connecting with a partner, or feeling loved, appreciated, and desired.
6. Being in a nonmonogamous relationship. These fantasies involved practicing some form of non-monogamy, such as swinging, polyamory, cuckolding, or having an open relationship.
7. Gender-bending and homoeroticism. This final category was all about pushing the boundaries of your gender identity/role/expression (such as cross-dressing) and/or your sexual orientation (such as being heterosexual but having a same-sex fantasy).
Please note that these categories are not mutually exclusive. There is some overlap between categories, and people can fantasize about more than one of these things at the same time. For instance, a gangbang fantasy might not just be about multi-partner sex—it may also have elements of BDSM, novelty, and sexual taboos. These seven categories simply represent the predominant fantasy themes in the data, and they can potentially be combined in any number of ways.
