Fantasizing about someone you know? Your brain isn’t betraying you, I promise! #marriagetips

Is it okay to fantasize about someone you know in real life? Hey, welcome back to Sex Questions You're Too Nervous to Google. I'm Vanessa Marin. I'm a licensed sex therapist, and let's break this one down. So the first thing I'd think about is how this fantasizing affects your real-life relationship with this person. And I think a lot of that comes down to the content of the fantasy too. Like, are you still able to have a normal, healthy relationship with this person? Can you treat them with kindness, decency, and respect? If you're doing things in the fantasy to this person that make it difficult to have a healthy, respectful relationship with them in real life, then I think the answer is no. I'd also play a couple reverse the role games here. So first of all, I'd think about how would you feel if you were the subject of some random person in your life's fantasies? Does that feel good for you? Does that feel weird for you? Sometimes just swapping roles like that helps us get more clarity on what feels right and wrong for us personally. Then the second role reversal that I would do is think about how would you feel if you knew your partner was fantasizing about someone random in your life? So again, there are no objectively right or wrong answers here. But if you wouldn't feel comfortable with your partner fantasizing about other people, then it's probably a good sign that you shouldn't be fantasizing about other people. At the end of the day, there's nothing inherently wrong with fantasizing. It's a really normal, natural part of being human. But it's just important to be thoughtful about the specific context and specific ways that we feel comfortable or not so comfortable fantasizing.