Feelings of guilt, shame, and confusion about our fantasies and what is turning us on is common in our society. We want to know, why do I feel this way? And where does this come from? The short answer is this, our sexual fantasies are likely a reflection of the very stimuli/stimulus which we were exposed to during our sexual awakening, much like classical conditioning. For example the boy who experiences his first erection in the bathtub, may thus pair arousal with water and bathing, and thus might have fantasies involving water. The girl who has a domineering mother, or who feels ostracized a lot by her peers may have fantasies about being dominated as an adult.
What is often difficult for people to understand is that sexual awakening happens when we are children. Childhood sexuality though a completely natural part of development is often ignored in our culture, shunned or brushed under the rug as wrong. The child is made to feel ashamed or guilty for having sexual thoughts, and desires. No explanations are given and nothing is talked about. But remembering that sexual curiosity is a normal and natural part of a healthy child’s development an innocent desire of a child to explore, and feel pleasure, can eradicate much of the shame and guilt we have about our early sexual experiences, which in turn may lead to our current state of confusion regarding our desires and arousals.
Sexual fantasies may also be a reflection of our daily anxieties. For example, the one who worries about having too many responsibilities in his/her daily life may fantasize about completely dominated and controlled in bed, or the woman who feels small and unattractive may fantasize about being a sexual dominatrix. The key is to remember that we are creatures of balance. What we present to the world and feel on a daily basis often needs to be countered by it’s polar opposite, which could be presenting it’s face in our sexual fantasies and fetishes. This is not to say that the individual who fantasizes about being sexually dominated in bed is thus weak and helpless in real life. In fact the opposite is quite true. Our sexual fantasies are often times a representation of something in our life, whether past or present and when we break them down and take a much closer look, we will see that they are a normal reaction to some set of our own life experiences.
©Copyright 2010 by Mou Wilson, MFT. All Rights Reserved.
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