You Want Someone Else

When we were remodeling our house in 2005 and 2006, there was one contractor who found his way into my fantasies. I mean, unbeknownst to him, he did. I'll tell you more about what happened there later in this episode when we talk about different reasons you might want sex with another person and what you can do with those fantasies. But for now, let me ask you do you have fantasies about sex with other people? Do you have sometimes active desires to consummate those fantasies? What do you do with that? What does it mean? Today we're going to look at a couple ways I've helped clients work with their fantasies or their active desires to have sex with other people, and I'll give you some good questions to ask yourself about your desire. Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in life. Together, we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease, pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're talking about sex with other people, the idea of it, the desire for it, and what you can do when you have that desire. We'll look at different reasons I've seen that people have for wanting to have sex with someone else, or at least thinking about it in more than a passing way. And I'm going to give you some ways to learn more about yourself as a part of this conversation. Let me say something about monogamy up front. Most of my clients are monogamous and they're really challenged by the notion that they might not have to be. So I'm going to front load one truth and then I'm going to set non monogamy aside as a topic for a different episode. Here's the truth. You can absolutely design your agreement with your partner so that you both have the option of exploring your desire to have sex with other people without being dishonest. The lying and the hiding are the toxic parts of infidelity. Honest, consensual non monogamy is as ethical as monogamy is, and it can be part of a healthy, happy family life as evidenced by by a growing community of people who are out about it and by the many people throughout time who have had ways of loving that involved more than one partner in their lives. This is not the swingers of the seventies or something sordid. It's a recognition of people's natural drives. In the show notes, you'll find a couple of books that I recommend for further reading, and I'll come back to the topic of opening up your relationship myself at some point in time, especially if I get a lot of questions about it after this episode. Okay, so that said, with non monogamous arrangements named and addressed for the rest of our conversation here, I'm going to presume that you have an agreement to monogamy. So when thoughts come up about having sex with someone other than your partner, that presents a complication for you on one level or another. I'm going to walk you through the thought process I use with clients who come to me with that kind of experience. They'll say to me things like I keep thinking about this other person or I'm wondering if it's even possible to have the kind of sex I'm craving with the partner I have. I might need to have sex with someone else to really feel the way I want to feel. Did you watch the movies or read the books of Harry Potter by J.K. rowling? There's a wizard named Dumbledore who has a magical device called a pensieve. By looking into the wide bowl of the pensieve, Harry sees, projected onto the surface of the liquidy gas inside, visions of his own future. So anyone who looks into the pen sieve sees themselves. I think of sexual fantasies as being like a pen sieve. They show us ourselves. You can see yourself in your desires. When we've agreed to monogamy, and we theoretically want to keep that agreement, but we're having a lot of thoughts or fantasies that point to wishes about stepping outside that agreement, we have a fantastic opportunity to see ourselves in a new, deeper way. To get the most learning and insight possible from your desire, let's look at a couple of different possibilities. So first, are you wanting to have sex with or experiencing a romantic infatuation with one particular person? If so, what qualities about them draw you to them? What are you imagining it would give you to have more of a relationship with them? What are you thinking it would feel like to have sex with them? What would it mean about you? What would become possible if you had sex with them or had a relationship with them? What other results, at least in your fantasy would it create in your life? What would such a relationship get you away from or get you off the hook about? What would it get you out of? What would it destroy? And how would you benefit from or be gratified at some level by that destruction? Another common scenario is that you don't have anyone in mind, but you're yearning for a change or an escape or an addition to your life. You imagine having an affair or finding someone new in the abstract. So in that case, I ask clients to consider questions like what truth are you not wanting to tell inside your relationship right now? What aspect of your life or yourself might you be avoiding dealing with? What difficult emotions or sensations subside when you become absorbed in the fantasy or in this string of thoughts? What relief do you get? Now a third possibility. Is there a specific kind of sexual experience? Simpler, quicker, more languorous? More dominance from your partner? More submission from your partner, or something else entirely that you're craving? If so, ask yourself these questions. Have you talked with your partner in a direct, clear, kind way about this desire? What was their response? If you haven't talked to them about it, why not? How might you prepare yourself to have such a conversation? And what story do you tell yourself about why you can't get this desire met with your partner? Why it would need to involve another person? Now, finally, I invite you to check for these other ways that people tend to use fantasies or infatuations, whether they're specific or generalized, to deal with their lives, but in an indirect, not very effective way. Why is this arising right now? Ask yourself what else is going on in your life? Look at the timing. In particular, what happened just before you started having these fantasies and what's coming up in the near future? You know, turning 50 is a real thing for a lot of people, or turning 40 or turning 60, you name it. Your partner's milestones are also triggers. Sometimes if they have a big birthday, the two of you have an anniversary, one of you has a job change, or there are other family changes. And for many people, the age at which, say, their dad had a heart attack or their mom divorced him, these rhythms intergenerationally can leave ghosts in the lives of adult children. And they can rattle around in your attic without you even realizing that they're haunting you. So check out the timing of this urge. And here's another question. Are you trying to escape or sidestep a natural and normal discomfort in your relationship? For example, if your partner pays a lot of attention to your child or your children and you feel Jealous and neglected. You might fantasize about someone who's infatuated with you and only you. And third, are you trying to get your identity needs met through this other real or fantasy person? For instance, do you long to feel youthful or powerful or irresistible? To feel taken care of or feel some other kind of way? Might the potential or theoretical extracurricular relationship look like a tidy way to shore up your own ego? These aren't easy questions to ask yourself, and this has not been an exhaustive list. And I go way deeper with clients as I learn more about what's happening in their head and their heart, what's being communicated and not being communicated, and what they truly long for. But I trust that the set of questions I've just given you can get you started, at the very least, on a process of self discovery. Once they've got some good insights. My clients often have work to do in their own inner world that has very little to do with their partner or their sex life. But these fantasies do also frequently have sexual invitations inside them, and I encourage you to look for that part too. What about your fantasy? Can you share with your partner? Remember my contractor fantasy? What I realized in that really stressful loss of sanctuary, tons of decisions world that I was living in inside of our remodel? For me, the fantasies were about a delivery of effortless pleasure. My image was that this guy would come in all muscles and flannel. We wouldn't take off many clothes, but he would kind of gruffly handle me. And then we'd both get on with our days. It was like fast food fucking. It was less about my deep longings erotically and more about a grab for relief, an escape from the pressure of remodeling, maybe a twist of novelty thrown in there. I didn't need to act it out with a stranger in order to be true to myself. But Kurt and I did use that insight to increase our playfulness and get me and him more relief from the remodeling pressures. I believe that's the value of fantasies about other people or other people turning our heads in daily life. Those thoughts and bodily responses can inform our erotic lives with our partners, and they can enrich how we play together. For that to happen, though, we have to be open and playful and trusting with one another. So I hope today's questions have been helpful for you. If you or your partner have been having thoughts like these, this is an example of the sort of thing we look at in phase two of my great passionate sex system for navigating lifelong passion. In Phase two, we're identifying and removing obstacles to intimacy. Fantasies aren't in and of themselves obstacles to intimacy, but they likely hold information about where and how you can unlock more pleasure, more turn on, and more closeness. When you have fantasies, desires and urges, get curious. Don't push them down. Don't chastise yourself for having them. Don't pretend they didn't arise. You're standing on sacred, fertile ground. A whole bunch more aliveness is available here, perhaps by acting on those urges, but more likely by being curious about why they're arising and what they're really trying to tell you. So stay curious and let me know what you discover. And if you'd like my help working with all the places where there's more potential aliveness, joy, intimacy and pleasure between the two of you, send me an email or a DM and let's talk more about my GPS system. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizendary.com that link is in the show notes for you. You know new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget, with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button, and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.