Vanessa Marin: So, what do you think other people fantasize
about?
Xander Marin: Hmm. Today we're getting into the Halloween
spirit and kicking off the month of October with the seven most common fantasies based
on real research.
Vanessa Marin: Real research, not fake research.
Hey, there. We are Vanessa and Xander Marin. We're a married couple. We've been together
since 2007 and it is our mission to equip you with the tools that you need to create
an extraordinary relationship inside the bedroom and out.
If we have not met yet, my name is Vanessa and I specialize in sex and relationship therapy,
I'm a licensed psychotherapist. I've spent the last 15 years or so working with thousands
of people and I've served as a featured expert for the New York Times, O the Oprah magazine,
Real Simple, and many, many more.
Xander Marin: And I'm her husband Xander. I used to work
a pretty normal job in the corporate world, but I started seeing how much of an impact
Vanessa was making with her work and I decided to join her so that we could reach even more
people. Being married to a sex therapist does have
its perks. I'd like to say I've picked up some pretty good insight into what does and
doesn't make relationships work and I just love bringing real stories from our life to
tell you about and see if they can help you out in your life and your relationship.
Vanessa Marin: So, in this video, we are going to reveal
the seven most common sexual fantasies according to the largest, most comprehensive study to
date. After watching this video, we hope that you'll feel less alone or weird about whatever
fantasies you may have, because ultimately we all have fantasies.
Xander Marin: Oh, yeah.
Vanessa Marin: Perfectly normal. It's perfectly common. Whether
we want to admit it or not, we all have them and so we need to normalize it.
Now, if you're having a hard time figuring out what your fantasies are, you'll also get
a ton of inspiration to help you uncover what they might be.
Xander Marin: So, this video is based on research by Dr.
Justin Lehmiller. He spent two years interviewing over 4,000 Americans to find out what the
most common sexual fantasies are.
Vanessa Marin: Now, 97% of people reported having fantasies
and most people reported having them pretty frequently. The majority of people said that
they fantasize a few times per week up to several times per day.
Xander Marin: If you're worrying like, "Oh, I don't have
any fantasies," or, "What's wrong with me," it's probably just a matter of what you call
it. A fantasy might not be the word that you use. You might find yourself dreaming about
something, or thinking about something.
Vanessa Marin: Or just something you get turned on by, something
that you enjoy, something you're curious about. Yeah, a lot of us overinflate the word fantasy.
Xander Marin: Yeah.
Vanessa Marin: To feel like it has to be really intense or
extreme or very wild and really, really into it.
Xander Marin: Or really well-defined.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah, but as you will see, when we start going
through more of these, that there are actually a lot of fantasies that feel a lot smaller
than that.
Xander Marin: Yeah. If you're one of those, "I don't have
any fantasies" people, you might hear these and be like, "Oh yeah, I think about that
sometimes." According to Dr. Lehmiller's research, the
seven most common fantasies are, and we're going to actually make this fun and go in
reverse order. These are all common, but we will be counting down to get to the most common.
Number seven.
Vanessa Marin: Is homo eroticism and being a different gender.
Lots of straight people, women in particular, fantasize about having same sex encounters.
Xander Marin: All right. Number six is intimacy, romance,
and passion.
Vanessa Marin: We'll talk a little bit more about that one
because that's a really interesting one. The number five most common fantasy is swinging,
partner sharing, or polyamory.
Xander Marin: Number four are "taboo" or "forbidden sex"
like exhibitionism, voyeurism, or fetishes.
Vanessa Marin: Number three is novelty, adventure, and variety,
which includes sexual activities that you may not have done before, like some people
might fantasize about oral, anal sex, playing with toys. This also includes having sex in
different positions, having sex in unique settings or having unexpected sexual encounters.
Really interesting little tidbit as a part of this one, the most common sexual position
that both men and women fantasize about is doggy style.
Xander Marin: All right. Number two is power, control, and
rough sex, including BDSM. What does BDSM stand for, babe?
Vanessa Marin: Bondage, domination, sadomasochism.
Xander Marin: All right. This category sounds pretty intense,
but it also includes tamer behaviors like wearing a blindfold or one partner being more
in control than the other. This is such a common fantasy that only 4% of women and 7%
of men never have had a BDSM fantasy.
Vanessa Marin: Wow.
Xander Marin: Interestingly, Americans were more likely
to want to give up control, then take control during sex.
Pain is also a big part of this category. 60% of people fantasize about inflicting pain,
whereas 65% fantasize about receiving it. If you're trying to do that math there, it
doesn't add up because there's a lot of people that are fantasizing about both receiving
and giving pain.
Vanessa Marin: But it sounds like the receiving pain is a
little bit more popular.
Xander Marin: Yeah, I think so. According to the research
women were more likely than men to have pain fantasies, and also this category includes
forced sex fantasies, which are actually a lot more common than you might think.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah. A lot of people do not know this, but
it's one of the top fantasies. A lot of people get freaked out about it because they think
like, "Oh, well, who actually wants that to happen?" We'll talk about this a little bit
later, but fantasizing about something doesn't necessarily mean you want it to happen.
Xander Marin: Yeah. I think a lot of people refer to this
as ravishment rather than forced sex, because that has a bit of a more positive connotation.
Yeah, in a fantasy perspective, I think that's completely acceptable and totally fine and
hot and that's why you refer to it by a more positive name.
Vanessa Marin: Ravishment. Yeah. Nobody out there actually
walking around hoping to be raped or forced sex upon them but if you think about it in
those different kinds of terms where it's more about being ravished, then that can make
it feel more acceptable.
Xander Marin: What's number one?
Vanessa Marin: Yes. We are at the most common sexual fantasy,
which is multi-partner sex. This includes threesomes and group sex. 89% of people said
that they had this fantasy.
Xander Marin: Probably you.
Vanessa Marin: Probably, you, yes. Men were more likely to
have multi-partner fantasies than women, but obviously with such a high number, women had
them very frequently too. Now, it's really important here to note that there was no connection
between your happiness in your relationship and fantasies about other partners. Some of
the happiest, most satisfied couples still fantasized about bringing another person into
the bedroom.
Xander Marin: Yeah. I've definitely fantasized about that.
Have you?
Vanessa Marin: I have too.
Xander Marin: All right. We're on the same page. Yeah, what
do you think about this list? I think it's pretty interesting. The first thing that popped
out to me is I thought it was interesting that intimacy is on the list, given that that's
kind of a societal expectation of how we can and should act in relationships.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah. That stood out to me as well, how frequent
it was that romance was a part of the fantasy. I think like we were sort of saying earlier,
a lot of people hear the word fantasy and they think it needs to be something really
kinky, really wild, and over the top.
Xander Marin: Something you're not supposed to do.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah, like taboo or forbidden. Don't get us
wrong, those kinds of fantasies are great. There's nothing wrong with having those kinds
of fantasies, but they're not the only kinds of fantasies. It's perfectly fine and healthy
to fantasize about sex that feels really sweet, romantic, very intimate.
Xander Marin: I guess it really shouldn't come as any surprise
if you go into a airport bookstore and look at romance novels.
Vanessa Marin: Romance.
Xander Marin: Romance.
Vanessa Marin: Interestingly enough, when it comes to romance
fantasies, most people fantasize about their own partner, which I thought was pretty sweet.
Xander Marin: That's sweet.
Vanessa Marin: People fantasized about their partner about
51% of the time compared to just 7% of the time fantasizing about celebrities, famous
people, other people.
Xander Marin: Yeah. We want to be romanced by our partner
and then we want to have groups sex with other people.
Vanessa Marin: Exactly.
Xander Marin: All right. Let's get into some other interesting
tidbits.
Vanessa Marin: The majority of respondents said that the
most important quality of their sex life was variety.
Xander Marin: The spice of life.
Vanessa Marin: The spice of life, yeah. That advice that
you always hear to spice it up in the bedroom, there is actually research to back that up.
Xander Marin: All right. Also men are more likely to have
taboo fantasies like voyeurism.
Vanessa Marin: Women were less likely to care about who their
partner was in the fantasy. Women were much more flexible about who they could be turned
on by and they were also more likely to have same sex fantasies too. Lehmiller thinks that
part of what might be at play is that women are more likely to focus on themselves in
the fantasy, like they're the main character, they're playing the main role in the fantasy,
whereas men tend to focus more on their partner in the fantasy.
Xander Marin: Interesting.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah, if that's the case, it would make sense
why women were less choosy about who their partner was in the fantasy.
Xander Marin: Interesting. Yeah, I don't really think about
myself very much in my fantasies.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah. I'd never really thought about that
before until I read that research and I was like, "Yeah, I am the main character in my
fantasies."
Xander Marin: I'm going to have to think about this one.
Vanessa Marin: I know, it's really interesting, right?
Xander Marin: All right, you learn something new every day.
One in seven people said that their most popular fantasy came directly from something that
they saw in porn, which is not great news since porn sex is really nothing at all like
real life sex.
Vanessa Marin: People who self identify as Republicans were
more likely to fantasize about sexual activities that are typically considered immoral, like
infidelity orgies and voyeurism.
Xander Marin: For those of you who are not Americans, that
is more ideologically conservative or on the right.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah. And Lehmiller's thought behind this
was that when we think of something as being wrong, when we try to convince ourselves not
to like it, it actually does the reverse and makes it seem a lot more sexy in our own heads.
Xander Marin: Interesting. All right. 85% of people fantasize
about using toys in the bedroom.
Vanessa Marin: 40% of people said they fantasized about playing
with food in the bedroom. They brought up the usual things that you would think of like
chocolate whipped cream, but people also mentioned foods like corn on the cob.
Xander Marin: You'd like that one.
Vanessa Marin: I wouldn't. I like some corn on the cob, but
not in the bedroom. Bubblegum, no, and ranch dressing. Now, I really love ranch dressing,
but I don't want to have that in the bedroom.
Xander Marin: But it's tasty.
Vanessa Marin: I want to eat it afterwards, how about that?
Xander Marin: All right. Most people reported being different
people in their fantasies in one way or another. Maybe not an entirely different person, but
some aspect of yourself is different and that you're really different from how you are in
real life.
Vanessa Marin: Hmm. Yeah, this came up a lot with women tended
to fantasize about themselves as being much more confident than they feel in real life.
Lehmiller also believes there's a connection between fantasies and desire. A lot of people
complain about having low desire, but his thought was that maybe it's not that we have
low desire, maybe it's that we don't have much desire for the kind of sex that we've
been told we're supposed to want. What could happen instead if we gave ourselves permission
to be turned on by the things that actually turn us on? Maybe we wouldn't have the low
desire anymore.
Xander Marin: That's something to think about.
Vanessa Marin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Xander Marin: It's also not worth trying to pretend that
you're not turned on by your fantasy because trying to prevent yourself from having a fantasy
tends to only make the fantasy stronger.
Vanessa Marin: Yep. Less than one third of people said that
they had previously acted on their biggest sexual fantasy and the main reasons why were
that they were unsure about how to act out the fantasy and they had fears that their
partner would disapprove of their fantasy.
Xander Marin: Then of the people that had shared their fantasies
with their partners, the vast majority of them actually reported a positive or neutral
response from their partner, so not a negative response.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah.
Xander Marin: I know a lot of us are afraid of sharing our
fantasies with our partners, but the research does show that our partners are actually a
lot more open-minded and accommodating than we might think. Like we were saying before,
go ahead and share your fantasies and see how it goes because there's a high likelihood
it will result in you starting to have a lot more of the sex that really turns you on.
Vanessa Marin: Finally, that being said, just because you
have a fantasy does not mean that you have to act on it. Sometimes fantasies are fun
specifically because we know that we would never do it in real life.
Xander Marin: Yeah. It's definitely one of those things
where it's like maybe even the thought if you try to bring the fantasy into real life
or think about what it would be like in real life, then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh,
God, no, I don't want that." That's fine. That's normal.
Vanessa Marin: Finally, if you need a little bit of help
uncovering your own fantasies, because again, like we've said before, a lot of people say,
"Oh, I don't have any fantasies," because we have all these judgments of our fantasies
or we think that it needs to be much more elaborate than it actually feels like. If
you want help figuring out what your fantasies actually are, or you just want some ideas
of ways to play around with them, you can also try thinking about fantasies in terms
of these categories that we came up with.
Xander Marin: All right. Number one is role-playing. This
is where you pretend to be certain characters. For example, you might take on the role of
the student and your boyfriend might be the teacher.
Vanessa Marin: Another category is specific sexual behaviors.
This includes things like threesomes, oral sex, playing with sex toys, being spanked
and so on. A lot of the kinky stuff would fall into this category, but there are plenty
of behaviors that are totally vanilla too.
Xander Marin: Another one is power dynamics. You might be
into the idea of letting one person be completely in control and the other person being totally
submissive.
Vanessa Marin: There's also a category around different kinds
of partners. You may fantasize about being with a celebrity and old crush, your neighbor,
or like we mentioned earlier, just your partner.
Xander Marin: Another one is stories. Some fantasies get
really wrapped up in a specific storyline. You might be dreaming about having sex in
the middle of an abandoned beach or losing your virginity to a mysterious stranger.
Vanessa Marin: Our final category is feeling. This is a category
that not a lot of people think about, but many of us actually experience. You might
fantasize about being swept off your feet in an intimate encounter.
Xander Marin: Romantic.
Vanessa Marin: Or you might dream about feeling confident
and uninhibited.
Xander Marin: That wraps up the video all about fantasies.
If you liked the video, please give us a like or a comment down below and let us, if this
information surprised you or what your fantasies are.
Vanessa Marin: Yeah, share them.
Xander Marin: We;'re down to find out. Yeah, we'd love to
know what you think in general. Also make sure to hit that red button and subscribe
to our YouTube channel while you're at it. It really helps other people find these videos.
Also, click that notification icon so that you keep getting notified when we put up new
videos.
Vanessa Marin: We have a gift for you. If you want to start
incorporating fantasies into your sex life but you're feeling pretty nervous and unsure
and you don't know how to get the conversation going, then you're definitely going to want
to check out our free guide, How to Start Talking About Sex with Your Partner Even if
You Never Have Before, this guide is going to give you word for word examples that you
can use to start talking about your sex life with ease. We will pop that link to the guide
in the description box down below. So make sure to check it out. Thanks for watching.
Xander Marin: See you next time.
Doctor duct.
Vanessa Marin: Doctor.
Xander Marin: Doctor.
Vanessa Marin: Doctor.
Xander Marin: Bring me my ducks.