Are My Sexual Fantasies Normal? Research, Desire and the Upanishads

One of the most common questions people bring to me, usually quietly and often after a long pause, is some version of this: are my sexual fantasies normal? The fantasy might involve surrender, control, being watched, being worshipped. The question underneath is older and tenderer: is something wrong with me for wanting this? The research has a reassuring answer, and the contemplative traditions have a fascinating one.

Are my sexual fantasies normal? What a large study found

In 2015, Christian Joyal and colleagues published a study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine titled, with admirable directness, "What exactly is an unusual sexual fantasy?" They surveyed 1,517 adults from the general population in Quebec, 799 men and 718 women, about a wide range of fantasies, and asked each to describe their favourite one in detail.

The headline finding: very few fantasies were statistically rare. Common themes far outnumbered unusual ones. Among women, somewhere between 30 and 60 percent reported fantasies with themes of submission, such as being tied up or dominated. Many women who described intense submission fantasies also said they had no wish to live them out; the fantasy itself was the point. The researchers also found that fantasies of submission and of domination often appeared in the same person, and that these themes were associated with greater sexual satisfaction.

The authors drew a clear line for when a fantasy becomes clinically concerning: when it involves non-consenting partners, causes harm, or is required for any satisfaction at all. Outside those markers, they argued, labelling fantasies as abnormal involves a value judgment as much as a scientific one.

A limitation worth naming: this was a single sample from Quebec, relying on self-report. Still, its picture matches what I see in practice across many countries. Fantasies of power, surrender and intensity are part of the ordinary human imagination.

Fantasy is a language

When someone tells me their fantasy, I listen for what it is saying. A fantasy of being tied up might speak of a longing to stop being responsible for a while. A fantasy of command might speak of a wish to be fully seen in one's strength. A fantasy of being watched might speak of a hunger for recognition.

This is why I treat fantasies as symbolic material. The imagination compresses needs into scenes. Understanding the need behind the scene gives people options: they can explore it consensually with a partner, play with it in imagination, or meet the underlying need in other parts of life. Each is legitimate. The fantasy stays theirs either way.

The Upanishads on desire

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, one of the oldest texts of the Vedanta tradition, contains a line I think about often. In a passage on how a person becomes what they become, it says, in essence: as is one's desire, so is one's will; as is one's will, so is one's action; and whatever action one performs, that one attains.

The tradition places desire at the root of a life. It treats desire as a force to understand, a current that shapes who we become. Tantric traditions, in their own ways, went further and treated desire as a doorway: energy to be recognised, refined and directed with awareness. I offer these as traditions and philosophies of the inner life. Their practical message matches what I see in my own work: when people meet desire with curiosity, they gain choice.

A practice: listening to a fantasy

This is a private journaling exercise. Keep it for yourself.

1. Choose one recurring fantasy. Write a single sentence that names its theme, without explicit detail.
2. Ask: "What emotion is at the centre of this?" Relief, safety, power, tenderness, freedom? Write one word.
3. Ask: "Where in my daily life do I long for that same feeling?" Write freely for three minutes.
4. Ask: "If this need were met with full consent and care, what would that look like?" List three possibilities, from imagination only to shared exploration.
5. Close by writing: "This desire is information. I choose what I do with it."

People are often surprised by how much tenderness lives at the centre of their most intense fantasies.

When to bring a fantasy into the room

If you want to share a fantasy with a partner, start outside the bedroom, at a calm time, with curiosity on both sides. Speak about the feeling first and the scene second. Agree that either person can decline anything without needing to justify it. If a fantasy causes you distress, feels compulsive, or involves anyone who cannot consent, that is a reason to speak with a qualified sex therapist.

For most people, the answer to the question is simple and kind. Your imagination is doing what human imaginations do: rehearsing, symbolising and exploring. The real art lies in listening to it well.

To explore the psychology of desire, trance and consent in depth, the Erotic Hypnosis Online Course gives you the full recording of a live two-day training, with every demonstration, exercise and explanation, plus bonus sessions and lifetime access.

Related reading

• What Is Erotic Hypnosis and How Does It Actually Work?
• Why Do People Enjoy Pain? Benign Masochism, Kink and the Second Arrow
• BDSM and Mental Health: What the Research Actually Shows

Sources

• Joyal, C. C., Cossette, A., & Lapierre, V. (2015). What exactly is an unusual sexual fantasy? Journal of Sexual Medicine, 12(2), 328 to 340. PubMed
• Newswise (2014, October 31). Sexual fantasies: are you normal? Summary of Joyal et al. with sample details and findings.
• Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.4.5.