I remember the first time anyone said those magic words to me during sex. “Think about whatever you want.”
He was a vanilla boy with a nonetheless toppy sensibility. His craving to evoke moans and expletives out of me was a recurrent theme in our fucks. He was happy to get into any position that made me yell into a pillow, happy to spank me if I explained how and why, happy to use my favorite dildos and vibrators and butt plugs with me whenever I asked. So it makes perfect sense that he wanted to use another crucial “sex toy” of mine that we had at our disposal: my mind.
See, fantasies are powerful when you’re trying to feel good and get off. If you’ve ever fantasized while masturbating, it’s likely you know that they can spike arousal, alter headspace, and make already-pleasurable sensations feel somehow even more pleasurable. Why wouldn’t that be true during sex with a partner as well?
The common argument against fantasizing during sex goes as follows: You should focus on the person in front of you (or, uh, behind you) while you’re having sex. You should be mentally present, and anything less is unfair to your partner. You especially shouldn’t fantasize about sex with someone other than the person you’re currently having sex with. How rude!
There’s a lot about this argument that I actually agree with. I agree that being mentally present during sex can create deeper intimacy and connection, and that not being mentally present during sex can be a sign that something is going awry with the sex or the relationship. I also agree that for some of us, it can be hurtful to hear that your partner was fantasizing about someone else while you were fucking them.
However, I don’t think any of that is sufficient grounds to completely dismiss the idea of fantasizing during sex as a categorically bad and rude thing to do.
In the years since that toppy friend-with-benefits first encouraged me to let my mind wander while he fingerbanged me, I’ve fantasized during sex countless times. I’ve fantasized about the partner I’m currently fucking: the face and sounds they make when I go down on them, how good it feels when they do a sex act other than the one we’re currently doing, different situations I’d like to fuck them in. I’ve pictured alternate-universe versions of the person banging me – like a dommier version of my vanilla fuckbuddy, or my spouse if they were a withholding English professor. I’ve placed myself in wild situations with faceless strangers – like in a brightly-lit film studio with a porn cam trained on me, or being gangbanged by the cast of a musical after the final curtain call. And yes, sometimes I have thought about actual, real people other than the one in my bed at the time.
This is a very complex subject, morally speaking. (That time I almost got a philosophy minor is definitely gonna inform what I’m about to write.) Some people would say you should always tell your partner if you think about someone else during sex, and that doing anything else would be dishonesty tantamount to cheating. I disagree; I think Orwellian “thought police”-type notions are terrifying, and I don’t think any thought can be inherently immoral if it’s never acted on in the real world. I feel strongly that you’re allowed to sexually fantasize about whatever the hell you want – these thoughts only become problematic when and if they start to influence your IRL behavior. Which, to be clear, can happen. I would imagine, for example, that watching a ton of racist porn would tend to deepen any existing racist biases a person had. There’s also lots of debate over whether watching child pornography makes pedophiles less or more likely to assault a child, but I would guess the answer is sometimes “more.” (These are extreme examples with too much complexity to really get into here, unfortunately, but you get the idea.)
My position is that you don’t have to tell your partner if/when you fantasize about other people, but you might want to, for a few reasons. First of all, a secret becomes less of a threat when it’s not a secret anymore. My partner knows I have a thing for butch women in leather jackets, and pretty much always have, so if I fantasize about one, it doesn’t mean I’m gonna leave them for one – but if I had that fantasy and kept it a secret, that would seem immediately more suspect and hurtful. Secondly, communicating your fantasies about third parties can actually, ironically enough, promote the very intimacy and connection that their critics say they threaten. If my partner is fucking me and knows I’m thinking about the barista around the block, then they know where I am mentally and can join me there if they want, by talking dirty about the fantasy and even including themselves in it. Thirdly, the more you let your partner into your inner erotic world, the better they can understand it. If I was in a hyper-vanilla relationship but kept fantasizing about dominant folks, telling my partner could prompt a conversation about kinky stuff we could explore together. How can they know about your fantasy if you don’t tell them?
All of this presupposes that you have a partner who is not so far gone into Toxic Monogamy Land as to think that fantasizing can be cheating. If your partner does think that way, well… that’s a tough spot. When two people want to be monogamous to each other but their definitions of monogamy differ, either they have to compromise or they have to break up. It’s a difficult choice, and I wish you strength in making it. My view is that pretty much everyone fantasizes about people other than their partner from time to time, and sometimes that means they’d rather be with that person than their partner, but most of the time it doesn’t. It’s just a normal human thing that happens. Personally, I would rather use those fantasies as a catalyst for greater pleasure and intimacy than see them as an obstacle to those goals.
My spouse is a dirty-talk master, brilliant at weaving filthy narratives that keep me present and focused. But they also know when to use my own brain the way they’d use a vibrator. “Let your mind go wherever it wants to,” they’ll say as they work their way down my body for a luxuriant oral sex session – and I lie back and breathe a sigh of sweet relief, knowing the thoughts in my head can be all pleasure, no guilt.
This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.