Another wonderful collaboration with Maddie Berky, writer, coach, friend, and agentress of change. Her website is here.
Maddie and I continue to tackle topics around sex, love, connection, intimacy, and other juicy subjects this week. Enjoy!
You’d think I couldn’t wait to write about fantasies. How much more fun can you get? It’s sex but ultra-steamy, totally made-up, no rules apply sex. I can be George of the jungle style swinging from something while a shirtless, shiny man serves me. But really, I don’t have a lot of crazy fantasies. That’s always disappointed me. I also have a PG-13 dreaming subconscious. Total waste.
Why is that? What do our fantasies, or lack there of, tell us about ourselves?
Ok, I lied. I do have some fantasies, but they’ve always been snippets. And they center around a man desiring me. Maybe it’s the classic pushing me against the wall as soon as we get in the door. Leaning me over my kitchen counter because we couldn’t wait to go upstairs. My snapshots are always about urgency. About being desperately wanted.
Why the cliched restraint? They all feel like sex scenes in an appropriately R-rated movie. Like the ones where you only see an errant nipple. But those were my only sources. I remember the first time a man asked me about my fantasies. I honestly had no idea what to tell him. I didn’t even know what I wanted in real life let alone in my made up one? I ended up piggy-backing on his threesome suggestion. Yeah. Sounds like a solid fantastical plan.
It’s only been in the last few years I’ve managed to create a respectable fantasy realm that hasn’t been sourced from outside suggestions. It wasn’t due to a surge of creative energy, rather it’s developed from understanding and not shaming my own desire. It’s come from establishing a masturbation practice (that feels incredibly official.) From dipping my toe in porn. From becoming a varsity-level sexter. And from talking with my partners about sex and everything in between. Fantasies for me have paralleled my real life. They started neat and boxed-in and as I’ve allowed myself and my desire to be generous and messy they have become me with better special effects.
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Fuck! When Maddie and I talked about this week’s topic I was a mixture of excitement and dread. Excitement because not much gets me as excited as my sexual fantasies and dread because I feel so vulnerable discussing the topic. I can talk to you about your fantasies all day long. I sit back and “hold space” while YOU navigate that part of yourself without judgment. My own stuff can be another story.
News flash! I have sexual thoughts.(Fantasies) I have transient sexual images go across my brain all the time… some not so transient. This is the foundation of my fantasies. I have favorites, oldies, fresh ones, and current ideas I’m totally teasing apart. I use these thoughts in many ways to get myself worked up and turned on. I use them as inspiration, for shifting my perspective, or soothing myself.
I have a wild imagination that’s caused me to toy around with most ideas I’ve heard of in my fantasy throughout my life. Some I’ve actually enacted in the “flesh”. I haven’t always shared my fantasies with others for fear of being judged. Shit, I judge myself for having some of them so the voice in my head tells me to be sure others will too. Sharing those are an investment for me that I’ve not always been willing to make. I’ve shared fantasies before and been ridiculed for them that led to a lack of trust, lack of rapport, bad choices, lack of intimacy. I’ve been scared at times and chose to withhold that part of myself.
Withholding is a double edged sword for me. I get to play it safe which certainly serves me in some ways but it also causes a lack in vulnerability and intimacy, which doesn’t really serve me. We all have a choice and I’m done fucking around and keeping myself closed off. I take healthy, calculated risks and lean into my discomfort.