‘Okay, when I’m actually having sex I must be about the most vanilla person on the planet – I’m probably quite passive in bed. Though I love being made love to quite roughly by my partner, I’m mostly all romance, hugs and kisses, and generally just warmly loved up. It’s when I masturbate that things are really freaking me out. Even if I start by not thinking of anything but the physical arousal, as that builds my fantasies kick in with a vengeance, no matter how I try to push them away from me. When I’m really aroused, it’s not so much that I go with them, more that they totally take me over. It feels so hot – then afterwards, I look back in horror at what I’ve been thinking. It’s the sort of extreme and even illegal stuff I would never do. There’s rape, domination/submission, inflicting and taking pain, with the age range of the fantasy partners ranging from the barely pubescent to the geriatric. It’s all sick and it’s scaring me. How do I get this shit out of my head?’
The Lovers’ Guide replies:
Our fantasies, like our dreams, can be scary places to go to. They are, more or less by definition, about exploring different, often radically different, possible versions of ourselves. They can reveal who we might be in a parallel, darker universe, and how alien this character would be from the point of view of our normal, properly socialised selves. Whoever said they wanted to go to the land where dreams come true should really have thought twice about that and been careful what they wished for.
Your fantasies aren’t ‘just’ fantasies, meaning that they might be telling you something, but they should be just fantasies, meaning they are a world away from your everyday, normal persona. Just as most people are capable of watching and enjoying a scary movie or a violent adventure flick, so most of us can indulge in weird thoughts and play with them, act them out in fantasy. We should then feel mentally healthier – as a kind of catharsis – afterwards for having done that. The human mind can be a dark, complex place; much of our psyche evolved before ‘civilised’ times; we’re not all squeaky, peaches and cream, clean as we might have been taught to be.
It is notable in your case that there is a pronounced dichotomy between your sexual fantasies alone and what happens in your sexual role with your partner. Now, there may be no harm in playing one role with your partner and having quite another in your fantasy life. You might like to consider, though, if you would really like to be a little more powerful and active in bed – to return the “quite roughly” stuff you mention. It could be that the “romance, hugs and kisses” aren’t quite enough for you to find them fully satisfying. Maybe it’s time for you to get on top, to push back at him more, pull him into you and throw him around a bit. Try bringing some of the (safer!) controlling behaviour from your fantasies into your sex life with your partner – you might find the sex (and any fantasies while with him) gets really amazing and the fantasies when alone start getting less scary. There’s no need for guilt or shame, and there could be some helpful pointers there to give your sex life a real boost, but if the dichotomy is too strong and the solo fantasies are really bothering you, it may be that you need to explore where they’re coming from and your attitude to them one-on-one with a therapist.