Justin Lehmiller - The Science Of Sexual Fantasies

Foreign.

Justin, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How you doing today?

Doing well. Thanks so much for having me.

Good man, good. Well, I'm excited. I think it was my podcast producer. He and I were having a chat and I had put out a poll to my audience and, you know, just asking, what type of conversations do you want to have more of? Like, who should I interview on the podcast? And sex was a huge topic, obviously, and your name had come up. And so as I dug into some of your work, I was like, oh, this is. This would be a really great conversation. I love that you were one of the top five sexperts that you need to follow on Twitter by Men's Health. I was like, that's. I didn't know that sexperts were a thing, but. But there you go. So before we kind of get into the juicy bits, I guess you could say, pun intended, intentionally tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Sure. So the first one that comes to mind for me is when I was in graduate school, I was working on my PhD in social psychology at Purdue University, and I was studying the science of relationships and what makes for happy, healthy, long term relationships. And as part of my journey in graduate school, you know, as a teaching assistant, that's kind of how you pay your way through. And I was assigned to be a teaching assistant for a human sexuality course. And I had never taken a human sexuality course for my undergraduate work and my master's, I went to Catholic universities where sex wasn't something that was really talked about. And prior to that, I went to Catholic schools for much of my life. And, you know, the only messages I really got around sex in school were just don't do it. So when I had the opportunity to be this teaching assistant, it opened my eyes to this whole world of sex research. I didn't know that it was a thing that you could study sex or how sex research actually worked. And I realized through that process that I didn't know much about sex. And it was weird because I was studying romantic relationships, getting a PhD in this area, and no one was talking about sex there either, which was kind of strange because sex is kind of an important part of most people's relationships. And so that's what really set me down the path of becoming a sex educator and researcher. I realized how little I know and therefore how little most other people probably know as well. And so that's what really motivated me to get into the field.

What would you say? And maybe I'M not too sure if you have a direct answer to this, and maybe there's a couple answers. What would you say is some of the most surprising things that you've come into contact with as you've done this research? Because it's. It is a very interesting field that you're in, and it's something that everyone's sort of interested in, but not a lot of people. You know, it's not dinner conversation.

Right.

Most people aren't talking about their sexual fantasies and positions and their sex life at the dinner table with other friends and family.

Well, I mean, if you invite me over to a dinner party, it does become a conversation about sex at the dinner table. Whenever the topic of what I do comes up. People have sex questions that they want to ask. And oftentimes they have to have a drink or two or three before they're willing to ask them. But I think that speaks to the fact that most of us just don't have those sources in our lives, those safe spaces, safe people we can talk to where we can ask these questions. In terms of what's been surprising to me, I mean, I've been in this field for close to 15 years at this point. And I think what surprised me early on, it's very different from what would surprise me today. And my threshold for surprise is pretty different as a sex researcher compared to the average person. I don't know that I consider a lot of what I find in my work to necessarily be surprising so much as it's just fascinating and it adds knowledge to this topic where we have such limited understanding. And I guess I could say one of the most surprising things is just how little sex has been studied, how it's such a new field of study, and how there are so many basic questions that have just never been answered. And it's going to take a long time to answer all of them because there's not a lot of funding available for sex research. You know, if you really want to understand something like an orgasm and how it works and what it even means to have an orgasm, we have a surprisingly small literature on which to even answer that question. So, for example, I have a colleague, Dr. Nicole Prze, who studies the science of orgasm, and she has her own orgasm lab out in California. And she's finding new things that are just changing and reshaping our understanding of orgasms and how they work. So, for example, she will have participants come into the lab and stimulate themselves to the point of orgasm, and then there is a button they have to push. When the orgasm starts and they have to push it again when the orgasm ends. And. And she records physiologically, like what's going on, the muscular contractions. And then people also report on the psychology behind it, what it felt like. And she finds that for a fair number of women in particular, they report having had an orgasm, but they don't show genital contractions. And so that gets at the idea of what even is an orgasm anyway. Is it defined physiologically, psychologically? Both. So that's the kind of stuff that I find fascinating and surprising. It just challenges our beliefs and ideas about what we consider to be basic things that we think most people understand, but we actually really don't.

That is interesting. I'm sure that at some point in our conversation we're going to go a little deeper into the concept of orgasm. Because my immediate thought was like, well, then how do you. What are some of the definitions around orgasm? But I want to just go to what I wanted to kind of get into here in the beginning, which, you know, you wrote this great book called Tell Me what yout Want, the Science of Sexual Desire. And part of it, you, you know, the introduction, you talk about this massive survey of sexual fantasies in America. And I kind of wanted to get into that just as a basic starting point to sort of talk about some of the main fantasies, some of the main findings that people have. And then I think we'll probably talk about hookup culture and today friends with benefits, and then how people can actually begin to use this information to elevate their own sex lives, specifically within the context of relationships. But yeah, let's start with the survey. What were some of the things that people fantasize about?

So I should say this was a massive survey. It took about two years to collect all of the data. And it was a survey of more than 4,000Americans from all 50 states, ranging in age from 18 to 87. So it's a pretty diverse group of people. They completed a questionnaire with 369 items on it. 69 wasn't intentional. It just kind of worked out that way. But I asked them to describe in great detail their favorite fantasy of all time. And then hundreds of different people, places and things they might have ever fantasized about, what their personalities and relationships are like. So it's a very broad assessment in terms of what people are fantasizing about. One of the key things I focused on was what are the themes in people's favorite fantasy of all time? And I found that there were really seven main themes that emerged. And since publishing the book, I've conducted a few other studies of fantasies, and I find that these hold up pretty well in other samples of people. But a few of the big ones are multi partner sex. So just doing it with more than one other person at the same time, most commonly in the form of a threesome. Then there's the BDSM fantasies, which are fundamentally about this consensual erotic power exchange in some way. Then there are the novelty and adventure fantasies, which is just about breaking out of your comfort zone and trying something that's new and different for you, whether that's sex in a new position or location, or trying a sex toy. Then we have the taboo fantasies, where you're doing something that you're not supposed to do. We know that taboos become very erotically arousing. The more obstacles you put up to saying, you, you know, hey, you can't do this, the more likely we are to want to try and do that. And then there are the passion and romance fantasies, which have that big emotional component to them. It's often about wanting to feel wanted or to feel desired. Then the last two categories are the non monogamy fantasies, which is kind of having the freedom to have more than one sexual romantic relationship at the same time. So to be in some kind of open relationship, to try swinging, for example. And then lastly there are the self exploration fantasies, where it's about playing with your gender role or your sexual orientation in some way and just exploring the self. So, for example, a heterosexually identified person who has a same sex fantasy, or somebody who fantasizes about cross dressing or changing their gender role or expression in some way. So those are really the seven main themes. And like I said, I find that they hold up pretty well.

Interesting. And did any of those, as you started to do that research and pull this data together.

What do you do with all that information? What does this actually start to tell us as individuals about what we're looking for in the context of a relationship? Do our fantasies inform certain aspects of relationships, or is it more insight into who we are as individuals or both?

It's a bit of both. And I think one of the main values or benefits of this research and the work of other fantasy researchers is to help normalize the vast diversity that exists in sexual fantasies. Most of us never learn anything about what it is that turns us on. And that's why one of the most common questions I get asked is, is my fantasy normal? You know, I have people who will pull me aside at parties and ask me that or they'll send me an email. You know, people just don't have a lot of sense of that. And when you feel like your fantasy is weird or unusual or strange or you're the only one who has it, people feel more shame and embarrassment and anxiety. And that can create sexual performance problems and ultimately lead to relationship problems. So I think that self understanding piece is key because if you can feel normal about yourself, and I have, many people have told me this, that my work has made them feel normal for the first time in their lives, that can be a huge weight that's lifted, that can then open the door to even greater sexual and relationship satisfaction. And I see in my work and the work of others that people who tap more into their fantasies, who share them with their partners, sometimes even act on them, they report the highest levels of sexual satisfaction, the happiest relationships, they're the most likely to report keeping passion alive long term. So there do seem to be benefits for both the self and for the relationship.

That makes complete sense because it's again, because we don't talk about fantasies, we don't talk a lot about desire. A lot of these things are sort of kept in the shadows. And then people have a lot of self judgment, shame, curiosity. And so I would imagine that as people have read this book and found their own fantasies within the research, it's like, oh, I'm not alone in that. That thing that I want to do or that thing that I want to have done to me isn't just sort of one off, it's that there's lots of people that, that are within that space. Part of your research dives into the difference between or the possible differences between men and women's sexual fantasies. And so I'm curious if you can just unpack that a little bit. Did you find in your research that there are substantial differences between what men and what women are fantasizing about or are they largely the same?

There certainly are some differences. I think it's important to start out by acknowledging that most of the things that men fantasize about are the same things that women fantasize about. They're the same things that persons with non binary gender identities fantasize about. You know, the fantasy themes are pretty consistent across gender and across sexual orientation. So no matter how you identify, there's a lot of commonality, but there are some distinct differences. So for example, while most men and women have fantasized about having a threesome or another form of group sex, men are more likely to have fantasized about that and to fantasize about it often. And when it comes to bdsm, women are more likely to have fantasized about that than men, and they're more likely to fantasize about it often. And that's particularly in the context of things like submission and bondage and masochism. So those are a couple of the key differences. Some of the other ones that pop out are that women have more fantasies about sort of playing with their sexuality in some way. So, for instance, heterosexually identified women are much more likely to have had a same sex fantasy than heterosexually identified men. And by contrast, men seem to have far more fantasies about exploring their gender role or expression in some way than women do. And I think that may be because for men, breaking the norms of masculinity and the pressure to conform to a masculine gender role is more taboo than. Than it is when women might be, say, becoming a bit more masculine or more assertive in some ways. Some people might take issue with that. I get it. But I think there is this big taboo around men being submissive or exploring their gender role in some way. And in general, men tend to be more drawn to taboos than women. So that could be maybe one of the explanatory factors there. But those are a few of the differences.

Yes. It's interesting, as you were talking of breaking free from generals and the pressures that a lot of men can feel thinking about that notion of the really powerful executive. I've worked with a number of men who are very prominent, very powerful, and how I want to say this, they're usually engaging a sex worker on the side outside of their marriage. And that function, it serves this purpose of them being this very submissive role where they have no power, they have no control, they're not making any decisions. And so it's interesting because I'm curious if part of the correlation of what you found that people are fantasizing about is about us as human beings trying to express something that we normally aren't allowed to express, or that historically within our lives, whether that's our gender, whether that's something to do with power, but something that's been hidden from us or in our shadow, that we're not actually able to access.

I think that's absolutely true. I would back up and say that fantasies are this multipurpose thing. They can do a lot of different things for us. Fantasy can be a temporary escape from reality. It can be a way to cope with boredom or to relax. It can also be as you were mentioning this form of self exploration where you have these other sides of yourself that you want to kind of mentally work through and see what would it be like if I adopted a different role or tried something that's new and different for me. So it's a way that you can safely and privately try on a lot of different hats. And that can often be the starting point for something you might actually do in the real world. Because fantasies are a way that we often mentally work through things before we actually try them out in person. And it's important to note that sometimes fantasy and reality don't always match up. Sometimes the fantasy that you have in mind when you try it in reality doesn't go exactly the way that you planned. But sometimes it also just takes a bit of practice. Right. The first time you try it, it's new and different and you have to figure out how it works. And I often advise people, when it comes to sex, try everything at least twice because the first time just might not go well because there was some anxiety. And you can learn so much from that first and revisit it, try it again in a different way the next time.

Yeah, well said. I feel like there's a lot of sage advice in that one. I'm curious about for the people that are listening to this and they're starting to sort of think about like, oh, what do I fantasize about and what do I actually want sexually with my partner or in my marriage or in my dating life? What do you say to the people that don't have a good sense of what they actually desire or want? Because I think one of the things, or maybe it's less about not being able to know what they want and less about being able to admit what they want. So how do you sort of approach guiding people in coming into contact with our fantasies? Right. What we want, what we desire, what we want to bring out in a relationship?

Yeah, I think there are two parts of that. And one is it can be hard to know exactly what you want until you try it. And I think that's really true when it comes to sex. And you can have these ideas in mind that sound very hot, very erotic, but then you go to try them and you're like, nope, that's not for me. Right. So I think part of understanding yourself as a sexual person and what you want and what feels good is about engaging in some actual self exploration with a partner or partners. So that's part of it. The other part is how do you express a fantasy or Desire to a partner in a way that's not going to shut things down or make your partner feel insecure. Because it can be a tough thing to share a fantasy with a partner. For example, if you have a partner who maybe has a lot of jealous tendencies or feels very insecure, telling them that you might want to open up your relationship or try something different might be perceived as threatening. Right. They might think, oh, you're not attracted to me anymore, or there's a problem in the relationship. So I think there's really great care and effort that comes with sharing sexual fantasies. And so as a starting point, I think there's a lot of validation that's important when you're sharing a fantasy where you talk about how much you're into your partner and how much you love the sex that you're having and how attractive they are. And, hey, here's this new thing, and maybe what do you think of it? Would you be open to trying this together? And I think it's also important to go slow when sharing fantasies. Don't just. I get a lot of men who write me who will say, I want to watch my wife sleep with other people. How do I talk her into that? And I'm like, okay, no, that's not the starting point. Right. You're not supposed to talk anyone into anything. So I think maybe the first part is, have you ever shared any fantasies with your partner? And maybe it's sharing something that's at the more vanilla end of the spectrum before you leap right into, hey, go have sex with other people, and I want to watch. That can be a little bit too much too soon. It's about building up the trust and the intimacy and the communication skills before you get into the more, let's just say, adventuresome types of fantasies.

Yeah, I think that's very good advice, right. To start to share some of those things. Because it is funny, right? I think that a lot of people, we start to build up the courage and we want to have the courage. But then I think for a lot of men especially, it's like, well, I'm just going to. I'm going to bring it all in. I'm going to tell her everything. It's like, well, maybe, maybe that's not the best advice. You haven't told her, you know, the sort of basic stuff yet. So going to the deep end. I'm curious to get your thoughts. I'm going to take a little bit of a hard right here, but I'm curious to get your thoughts on the impacts of pornography and how that fits into this equation, Because I know for a lot of men, myself included, I mean, my fantasies for a very long time were dictated by the porn that I was watching. And, you know, in my late teens and early twenties, I was watching a lot of porn, you know, hours at a time, multiple days a week, you know, probably watching more porn than I was having sex. And I think for a lot of men, that has become the sort of standard where what they think they want is dictated by the porn that they watch, and they can kind of get any fantasy that they want through porn. So I'm kind of curious to get your take, if you've seen any research on some of this stuff and what your perspective is on where porn fits into the fantasy world.

So I've looked at this in my own research, and I find that there's a bidirectional link between porn and fantasy. So the biggest link is actually between fantasy driving, what you look for in porn. Most people around 80% or so that I've surveyed say that they've sought out porn that depicts their favorite fantasy of all time. So porn is a way that we can vicariously live out these arousing mental thoughts and images that we have. But it also goes the other way around. I mean, I've asked people, where do you think your favorite fantasy comes from? And people don't necessarily always know where they come from. Sometimes it's just something that pops into our head. We don't always know the origins of the thoughts and mental pictures that we have, but some people can readily identify it and trace it to something they saw in porn or an erotic novel that they read, where they were exposed to something for the first time, found it very arousing or titillating. And ever since then, it's become this persistent sexual interest that they have. So porn can and undoubtedly does shape our sexual interests, and the question of whether that's good or bad is one that often comes up. And I think it ultimately depends on the type of porn that you're consuming and how you're engaging porn. Because porn sex is not a good depiction of how sex actually works in the real world. You know, one of my favorite analogies for this, I was on a podcast with Tina Horn, who is a former adult performer, a while back, and she likened watching porn to watching a cooking show on television, right? Where you're just seeing, like, these little clips here and there, and you see the, you know, final finished product, and it looks all perfect and clean and all these other things. And it looks like you can make this recipe in just a few minutes. And you know, porn is kind of the same way. Like you don't see everything that goes on behind the scenes. You don't see the hours of extra footage that goes onto the cutting room floor. You don't see all of the pre seen discussion and negotiation of what's going to happen. You don't see the brakes for lubrication or all of these other sorts of things. And so, you know, if you're looking at porn and saying, hey, I want to repeat or replicate that in real life, if you're using it as a how to guide, that's a problematic way to look at porn.

I appreciate that perspective because I think it's. I think in some ways it is. I can't speak for women, but I think that for a lot of the guys that I've worked with over the years, it is this sort of comparison that we use, right? It's what we mark or sort of grade ourselves against. For a lot of guys it's like, am I living up to what I saw in the video? If I'm going to act this out in my relationship, am I doing it as well, am I performing as well, you know, am I lasting as long, you know, all of those pieces? And so I think for a lot of guys using it as a how to, that might not be its use. So I think that's probably a good thing to just drop in.

Yeah, I think a good way to cognitively reframe porn is that it's entertainment, it's not necessarily education, and so it's not that how to guide. So if you look at it as a vehicle for sort of exposing yourself to different things, for vicariously living out your fantasies as a way of introducing novelty in the relationship. You know, we actually see in the research that couples who use porn together tend to be more sexually satisfied because it adds that element of newness and excitement. So, you know, there can be healthy ways of engaging with porn. I don't consider myself to be pro porn or anti porn. You know, porn is just porn. I think we need to have what we call porn literacy and to be intelligent consumers of it. Just as we need to be intelligent consumers of everything in our lives.

Yeah, yeah. If you're having that Big Mac every day, it might not be the best thing for you. That's good.

Maybe not.

Yeah, maybe not. I appreciate that. Okay, well, let's shift gears a little bit here and talk about some of the other stuff that you've Researched. So you've talked a little bit about friends with benefits, when they work, how they work, what happens after. This is a wildly curious topic, I think for a lot of my listeners. So maybe I'll just hand the torch over to you and you can run with it. What have you found so far?

So I've actually been studying friends with benefits for more than a decade. It was actually the very first topic I studied when I got into sex research. And it goes back to the story I shared at the beginning where I was taking that human sexuality course, or rather serving as a teaching assistant for it. And I had to run these weekly discussion sections with students and they'd be asking me their sex questions. And one of the big questions that came up was how do friends with benefits work? And can they ever work out? Do they always have to get messy and complicated? And I'm like, I don't really know the answer and there's no research on this. So that prompted me to start studying it. And I've published multiple studies on friends with benefits over the last decade or so. The first one was really sort of looking at differences in how men and women are approaching friends with benefits. And I find that there are often a lot of discrepant expectations where men are much more likely than women when they think about the future of their friend with benefits, that they just want to keep it an open ended opportunity for casual sex. You know, they don't really want it to become anything more than that. And by contrast, women are much more likely than men to hope that the relationship changes form and that it either becomes a romantic relationship or that at some point they just go back to being friends who don't have sex. And you can see how this could lead to complications. You know, people are going in and they're not on the same page about what they want it. Someone's probably going to get hurt. And that's something that's reinforced by later research we did. We actually did a one year longitudinal study of friends with benefits. We followed people who had one of these relationships for a year. At the beginning we asked them why they got into the relationship, how they navigated it, and then a year later checked in with them to see what happened to that relationship. And we find that the people who had very discrepant expectations, who didn't communicate about the rules and boundaries, they just kind of leapt right into it, were the most likely to report that things didn't work out so well. But it was also really interesting just to look at the trajectories that these relationships can take. There isn't just one primary path that friends with benefits follow. It was divided roughly into quarters. So you had a quarter of people who after a year were still friends with benefits, a quarter who shifted back to being friends who don't have sex. There was a quarter who had no relationship whatsoever of any kind. And then there was a quarter who had shifted into some type of romantic relationship. So, you know, it can go off in all of these different directions, but the people who were least successful in getting what they wanted were the ones who wanted a romantic relationship. So, you know, if you're looking at a casual sexual opportunity as a chance for love, you know, maybe think again, maybe consider dating instead of looking at a casual sex relationship and trying to turn it into something that it's not.

That statement there might alter some people's strategies on Tinder.

That might change the minds right there. So in terms of the viability, did you do any follow up in terms of when people went from friends with benefits into relationships? Was there any sort of data on the longevity, the viability of that?

So there are a few studies that sort of look at how relationships begin. And when there is a solid friendship to start, those relationships actually tend to be stronger and they tend to last longer. And that's one of the other key things in terms of whether or not friends with benefits work out in the end, in the sense of you retaining some type of relationship with that person. It's all about the friendship. And, you know, if you kind of start this ongoing casual relationship with somebody and you don't really know them very well, you're not going to have the communication and all of these other things to allow for any type of successful transition later on. So I think the friendship is key. And if you have that solid friendship and you add the sexual component, sometimes that can turn into a relationship that works out really well. So it's the friendship, it's the communication, and it's the setting the ground rules and boundaries that is so important. You know, what is and is not allowed in this relationship. And I think that's a valuable thing to employ in any type of relationship. So many of us get into relationships without ever discussing the ground rules or boundaries. For example, people just assume in romantic relationships oftentimes that they're going to be monogamous. They also don't define what cheating is. They don't. And so then somebody crosses a line for the other person, they didn't think they were cheating, but the other partner does and so then that becomes this whole issue because you never discussed it at the beginning. So I think a lot of the tools and keys for successful friends with benefits are the same things as in traditional romantic relationships.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I keep hearing you sort of reinforce is that the structure that you create with the other person, whether it's a friends with benefits, whether it's your partner, as you start to engage in your sexual fantasies, that structure is what's going to make it the most viable, the most enjoyable, and the least likely to fall apart or sort of cause chaos. Is that roughly accurate?

I would say so, but with a caveat. So when we're talking about applying structure to a relationship, this is not about applying a rigid structure that will never change because over the course of time you will change, your partner will change, and you might change in very different ways. So this is a structure for now to get you started. But you need to revisit that structure periodically and maybe you'll change the rules of engagement in your relationship as you and your partner and everything else evolves in your life.

Just on that note, I'm curious, did part of your research look at whether or not or how our fantasies evolve over time? Because I would imagine that as people are in a long term relationship or even just, I mean, I think about myself like the fantasies that I had when I was younger versus now and that evolution takes place. So I'm just sort of curious about is there research to sort of show how our fantasies evolve over time as men and women?

Yeah. So it's funny you say this because in thinking about my own fantasies. Yeah. What I fantasized about as a teenager is not what I fantasize about now in any way, which anecdotally is sort of evidence that they do change. Our fantasies aren't static over the course of our lives. Now in terms of research, what we really need is a study that follows people for 10 or 20 years and every year you check in with them and see what their fantasies are. That's never been done because it's a hard study to do. There's no funding to do this kind of work. But what I did do in my research was to look at people at different decades of life and see are there differences in what they're fantasizing about? And there are. Now the caveat to this is that if you're doing what we call cross sectional research like this, where everybody's surveyed at the same time is what you're seeing an evolution of fantasies over the course of age, or are these just different generational or cohort effects? You know, maybe it's about the era in which you grew up and that shapes your fantasies in some way. And I think it's probably a bit of both. But I do see a few key differences based on age. One is that younger adults tend to have far more fantasies about BDSM than older adults. And I think part of that is because younger adults have so much anxiety about sex and body image. And BDSM can be this potent escape from reality and distraction and a way of coping with sexual insecurities and anxieties in a healthy and therapeutic way. By contrast, if you look at people and say their 40s and 50s, they have the most adventuresome sexual fantasies, the most fantasies about threesomes and group sex, about opening up their relationship, about trying new and different things. And I suspect that that is probably because most of these people at that period of time in their lives are in long term monogamous relationships and the sex has gotten a little stale or routine, and they need ways to sort of mix it up and keep that excitement alive. And their fantasies are one way of doing that. But I think it's also because as we get a bit older, we tend to develop more of that sexual self confidence, more of that sense of security, I guess, to some degree about ourselves. We feel more confident. We also give fewer fucks about what other people think. You know, we. That kind of opens the door to exploring different sides of yourself. You know, when you're younger, you tend to care a lot more about what everybody thinks about everything about you, from your looks to what you do and so forth. But as you get older and you don't have as much time left in your life, it's like, well, you know, if I'm not going to do this now, when am I going to do it?

Yeah, that's just. I was chuckling because, like, in my head I was like, that's why there's so many old people at naked communes. You know, like the nudist colonies are all elderly people. It's like, I remember I was in Vancouver, British Columbia, and in Vancouver, I don't know if have you ever been there before?

I have, and I'm going back again later this year.

Yeah. On UBC campus, there's something called a rec beach. And you go down this long staircase at the very back of the campus and there's this huge beach, and it's a nudist beach. And so you can be naked there there's lots of people doing drugs. It's lots of fun. But I think that what I was shocked by the very first time that I went there was like, it was probably like half. Probably 50% of the people that were there were very old.

I was like, huh, that's surprising.

And they were the most at ease, like they were just so comfortable. Anyway, that's just a little sidebar because I think it was interesting to hear you talk about the age difference and how we sometimes maybe shift towards different fantasies based on our age and the sort of freedom that we feel. On that note, what did you find? Are some of the. In the book, you talk about the benefits of getting in touch with your deep sexual desires. Can you just speak a little bit to some of the benefits individually? And did you have any research around the benefits to the couple?

So one of the benefits to the individual is that sense of self understanding and feeling normal. And that goes back to what we were discussing earlier is most of us just don't know anything about what a normal sexual fantasy is. So there's that ability when we learn about our fantasies and we learn to accept them, to finally feel some degree of self acceptance and to stop running away from our sexual thoughts. Because a lot of people, when they have fantasies or thoughts that make them uncomfortable, they try to suppress them. And suppression is really the least healthy thing you can do when you have an unwanted thought. Because it creates this ironic effect where the more you try actively not to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it and then it becomes even more distressing. So it's about starting first with finding that way of coming to terms with your fantasy. It doesn't mean you have to actually act on it or do anything about it. It's just sort of gaining that self acceptance and understanding. And that can be very beneficial to your mental health. And it can also help you to relax more during sex so that you're not this fall of anxiety. Anxiety and stress are really not your friends in the bedroom. And they can undermine sexual performance. They can reduce sexual desire. So it can ultimately help you improve your sex life in that way. And then in terms of couples who share their fantasies and who maybe go the extra step of acting on them, There are a few key benefits here. One is that it's a way of building intimacy, right? This is a process of self disclosure where you're becoming vulnerable with another person and you might be sharing this thing about yourself that you've never shared with anyone else in the world, which can be this, like I said, very powerful moment of vulnerability that can take intimacy to new heights. And it doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to go and act on that fantasy. It might just be the self disclosure that's beneficial. You can also use your fantasies as a form of dirty talk, as a way of enhancing or increasing sexual arousal. And so that in and of itself can have benefits. And then if you decide to act on it, there can be benefits there as well. If the experience goes well, right. It can bring you closer. And I find that most people who say they've shared and acted on fantasies with a partner, they report positive experiences that improved their relationship, that improved intimacy. It doesn't always work out that way. There are risks. I'm not saying everyone should go out and share and act on every single fantasy they've ever had. There are limits and that's important, important to keep in mind. And you need to do the risk reward analysis for yourself and for your relationship. But there can be benefits to the self and to the relationship by just getting more in touch with those fantasies.

One of the things that immediately comes up after that, I can kind of hear my listeners tuning into this conversation and thinking, but I feel a lot of blocks when I think about bringing my fantasies or my desires to my partner, or engaging somebody that's a stranger or one of my friends that I have benefits with. When I think about bringing those fantasies to them, there's a lot of blocks. And so how do you recommend people address that? Where do people begin? How do they address the resistance and the barriers that they naturally feel when thinking about engaging in their fantasies in real life?

The first part goes back to that self acceptance piece. You have to feel good about yourself before you can sort of let other people into that fantasy world. Because if you're brimming with anxiety or feelings of shame and embarrassment, that's going to come across in the way that you communicate your fantasy. And it may very well make the other person feel awkward and embarrassed at the same time. So start by working on the self first, and then when it comes to actually sharing the fantasies or talking about it, whether it's with a friend or a partner, you can recognize that this might be hard. This is not something you're used to, and that's okay. And you know, just by acknowledging that this is difficult can sometimes be sort of a helpful first step for opening the door to that conversation. And then, like I said before, it's all about going slow. And self disclosure works best when it is this prolonged Process where you're sharing little pieces of information about yourself and then the other person is sharing pieces of information about themselves, so you're learning about each other. If you just go on auto dump and say, here's every fantasy I've ever had in my life, that's tmi. It's too much information. It's going to lead the other person running for the hills. Right. That's not normal to disclose that much. So there's an art to self disclosure. There's a science to it as well. It works best when it's this reciprocal process that goes slowly over time where you're building trust and intimacy.

Yeah. So good. And so maybe let's just move that into like a couple, you know, because I think there's a lot of couples that tune into the show. Where do couples begin? You know, if you, if somebody's tuning into this podcast, you know, obviously I think the first thing I would say is listen to this podcast with your partner. You know, that's probably a good, that's probably a good place to begin. Or read your book right together. That might be a good, good place to begin. But after that, how does that disclosure look? Are there certain rules that you recommend? Are there certain ways that you recommend? I think you just said reveal some of those things slowly and create the breadcrumb trail, I guess you could say. But what are some of the other tools or tips that you would just give a couple in terms of revealing their fantasies?

Yeah. Before you get into the sharing fantasies part, it might be better to step back and just open up the lines of conversation around sex. You know, many couples just don't talk about sex in general, whether it's about fantasies or anything else. So it's normalizing those sexual discussions first that can be a key step to making these conversations easier. And then when it comes to sharing the fantasies, it's about the way that you approach it and it's about being able to be non judgmental with your partner. Because if your partner shares a fantasy with you and your body language conveys that you're grossed out by it, or you just think it's strange, they're going to feel really judged and shamed and that might shut down not just that conversation, but just conversations about fantasies and desires more generally. So it's about being willing to go in to listen. And when you share a fantasy with a partner, it's important to clarify, why are you sharing this? Is it because you want the other person to understand you better? So is this just an exercise in vulnerability and self disclosure, Is it something that you are sharing because you'd like to incorporate this in role play or dirty talk? Or is this something that you actually want to do in person? Because those are all really different. And if you just put this ambiguous information out there, like, I've been fantasizing about having a threesome, your partner might assume that you're trying to bring somebody else into bed with them. And maybe you don't actually want to have a threesome. You just find the idea of it to be hot and that talking about it is arousing. Right. So clarifying that, so you're not leaving your partner in this state of ambiguity. And if your partner shares something that you're not into, that's okay, you don't have to do it. But I think there are a few key things you can do there. One is to say, all right, I'm going to sit with this for a little while and think about, are there any aspects of this fantasy I might actually be interested in? Maybe I'm not interested in the whole thing, but maybe there is this little element. Maybe, for example, in this BDSM fantasy you shared, I'm into trying a blindfold, but I don't want to get into the whips and chains. Right. If you can pull out a little element that you can play with, that can be one thing. And, you know, if you're not into any aspects of the fantasy, then I think it's important to find an alternative. What is something that both of you could be comfortable. And so a good way to restart this conversation is to, instead of focusing on specific fantasies, step back and have a broader conversation about how do you want to feel during sex? What are the sensations physically and psychologically, that you want to experience? And when you can both express what those sensations are, you can craft and create this custom sexual fantasy together that meets everybody's needs. So maybe it doesn't match up exactly with what you had in your mind, but you're still tapping into the deeper feelings that you want to get. And I think ultimately that's what our fantasies are. They're an expression of our needs, and we don't necessarily need to do exactly what's in our fantasy. We can find alternative paths to achieving the same levels of fulfillment.

Yeah, I feel like that's such solid advice, because I think, you know, my wife is a marriage and family therapist, and we've worked with a number of couples over the years together. And I think one of the things that a lot of couples get into conflict about is that there's differing sexual fantasies or it's like there's a sexual fantasy that one person has and it gets brought into the relationship as like a non negotiable. It's like we have to do this and if we don't do this then it's a big rift within the relationship and it's not brought in with the delicacy that you're talking about. Right. Of the sort of entering into. Maybe we can try this thing or maybe we start here or maybe it's that. I'm not sure if I actually want to go and do this whole fantasy, but I want to talk about it. I want to bring it into our foreplay or we can create a scenario. So I think that's really, really solid advice for everyone that's listening. Justin, man, this is a great conversation and I feel like we could go for a very long time, but we're going to have to pause for today. So what would you leave people with? Single, dating, married, what would you leave them with? Just a sort of final thought about fantasies and desires and bringing those parts of us into our sexual dynamics.

I think it's important to rethink our fantasies. They serve so many important purposes in our lives. They can do do so much for us as individuals, so much for our relationships. And we need to stop running away from them because the more that we do that and we try to cordon them off from ourselves, the more opportunities we miss out on for pleasure and self disclosure and vulnerability. So I think it's about getting in touch with those deeper thoughts and feelings. And if there are aspects of your fantasies that make you feel uncomfortable, you're not alone. And in that. And if you have fantasies about something that would be troubling to actually carry out in the sense that it would be illegal or immoral or something else, that's where it's useful to consult with a sex therapist. Right. Because sometimes we can't deal with all of this all on our own. You know, oftentimes just by getting a little bit of sex education, we can resolve our sexual problems. But sometimes the issues go a bit deeper. And so that's where therapy can be really beneficial. You don't have to do this all alone.

Yeah, well said. Well said. All right, well, for everyone that's listening to this episode, share it with your partner, share it with your friends with benefits, share it with your spouse, and definitely check out the book Tell Me what yout the Science of Sexual Desire and how it can help you improve your sex life. Justin, thank you so much for joining me. For everyone that's out there listening, don't forget to leave a review wherever you're listening to this episode on. Share it with a friend or your partner. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Sam.