What sexual fantasies reveal about the mind

Our fantasies reveal our deepest desires- desires that are unbridled from any outside scrutiny or judgment. Therefore, our fantasies can provide a window into the propensities of our minds.

This is true for all fantasies including erotic fantasies. What men and women fantasize about when it comes to sex reveal how their minds have been shaped by evolution. Though their fantasies may sometimes overlap, men and women mostly fantasize about different things.

Fantasies of men

Men fantasize about erotic events more frequently than women. They have roughly twice as many fantasies as women and, when asleep, are more likely to dream about erotic events. This is consistent with the fact that men tend to have a stronger sex drive than women.

Since men produce millions of sperm in their lifetime and are not physiologically or psychologically burdened with the responsibility of bearing and rearing children, their best strategy for reproductive success is to spread their seed far and wide.

This is why numbers and novelty are key features of men’s erotic fantasies. Men imagine encounters with many different women and can even change partners in the middle of a fantasy episode.

Also, sex in men’s fantasies tends to be all about physical gratification devoid of any encumbering relationships, emotional elaboration, complicated plot lines, and extended foreplay.

The traits that heterosexual men find attractive in a woman are beauty, youth, fertility, and femininity. It’s not surprising then that men’s top fantasies revolve around women possessing these traits.

For instance, ‘the schoolgirl’ is a common fantasy, as pornographic data reveal. Speaking from a biological standpoint, a girl in her teens is a good combination of youth and fertility. Compared to a woman in her 20’s or 30’s a fertile schoolgirl can bear and rear more children simply because she’s younger and has more time on her hands before she hits menopause. 

Another common and popular fantasy among men is ‘the nurse’. Men are attracted to femininity, the key features of which are submissive and nurturing behaviours. Thus, besides being physically attractive, a feminine nurse who’s nurturing can be super attractive to men.

Men satisfy their fantasies mainly via pornography. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that the entire industry exists to satiate the fantasies of men who’re visually stimulated. Women in pornography are depicted as if they have the same sex drive as men, always ready and willing to engage in sex at the drop of a hat.

Women who feature in pornos are depicted how most men want them to be. On the contrary, women aren’t aroused by the same things that arouse men.

sexual fantasies book
The book has sold over 125 million copies worldwide with 70% and 80% of the readers being women in the UK and the US respectively.

What’s particularly fascinating about women’s fantasies is how they change as a woman approaches the ovulation stage of her menstrual cycle during which she’s most likely to conceive.

During this period, women’s fantasies tend to increase and they’re more likely to fantasize about multiple partners. Also, behaviors reducing intrasexual competition (such as dressing more provocatively than other women) have been observed to peak during this time.

These behaviours indicate a psychology adapted to maximize the chances of conception and promote sperm competition i.e. allowing the ejaculates of multiple men fight it out in the female reproductive tract so as to let the most competent sperm win.

This way her offspring, if it turns out to be a male, would be reproductively more successful because of inheriting competitive sperm.