I have sleep issues. On one hand, because I suffer from insomnia. On the other hand, because my lovely neighbour has nothing better to do other than turning the music volume up at two every night. And I must admit that I have been fantasizing about killing him…more than once…
I am sure that, at some point in your life, you have been asked by someone if one of your sexual fantasies ever came true. Some of you would have answered “yes”, others “no” or “not yet”, and there is a third group which probably said “Yes, but I still have a lot of sexual fantasies that I would like to realize”. You, dear readers, may know what I am talking about. Because all of us, as Human Beings, have sexual fantasies.
What people don’t know is that a sexual fantasy is just that: a sexual fantasy. I am going to explain myself. A sexual fantasy is part of our imagination and is something that can not come true because it belongs to our mind, with its own screenplay, its details, its landscapes, the actors who act out the fantasy, and that they are unlikely to appear in our reality in the way we imagined in our sexual fantasies. Sexual fantasies are erotic stories which can be written in books, but not in everyday life. The problem is that people always mix sexual fantasies with sexual desire. When you ask yourself: “What am I able to imagine”, it is your fantasy which will answer. When you ask yourself: “What do I want to do”, your desire will speak automatically.
It is true, and why would I deny it, that it is quite difficult to make out the difference between these two concepts because both sexual desire and sexual fantasies are mental representations which appear in our imaginative capacity. Both are inherent in our condition. However, our sexual desire explores our erotic imagination in order to feed the sexual intercourse mise-en-scène. Our sexual desire evaluates our moral values and based on that decides if a certain desire is appropriate enough to be put into practice. Nevertheless, sexual fantasy teaches us how far we can go, what the taste of our limits is. Sexual fantasies are the world map of our imagination and are not subject to any moral principles. Sexual fantasies know that they can do it, because their “play” is not going to be performed. Sexual desire arouses while sexual fantasy proposes to get excited. Therefore, sexual desire is feasible: it has our moral approval and our encouragement. Sexual fantasies are never feasible, they depend on us, and most of the time, we are not even able to confess them. In order to make a sexual fantasy come true, first of all this fantasy should turn into a desire and, consequently, it would not be a fantasy anymore.
A sexual fantasy for one particular person can be a sexual desire for another. And, following the same process, what can be a sexual fantasy for another person in any given moment of their life which can turn into a sexual desire later on. An example: if at fifteen, I have the sexual fantasy of practicing oral sex, at thirty years old, this fantasy has turned into a sexual desire. For some persons, the sexual fantasy of practicing oral sex is going to remain a sexual fantasy because their moral values scale (religion, sexual wishes, etc…) does not accept this practice as a sexual desire. And it is absolutely legitimate.
Some people can believe that mixing both terms, sexual desire and sexual fantasy, is an innocent tangle. But I think it is not. If we are not able to make a clear difference between what we are able to imagine and what we really want to do, it is because someone is interested in causing confusion. If our social control mechanisms make us feel guilty for what we fantasize about and make us believe that what we fantasize is, in reality, what we desire, we will become fearful of ourselves and, as a result, easily led and subjected to control. And fear has never been a great lover of knowledge. Never.
To come back to my lovely neighbour, if I fantasize about killing him, this fact does not convert me into a murderer. Think about it.
Ups! I was about to forget: did you know that most of women sexually fantasize about rape, sadomasochism, violence in general…? Poor little depraved creatures!
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