How common are kinky sex fantasies?
And is everyone a little bit kinky?
Written by Dr. Justin Lehmiller
When it comes to sex, people have a tendency to define “normal” in a pretty narrow way. This isn’t surprising in light of the way sex is discussed in most sex ed courses, which tend to focus largely (if not exclusively) on penile-vaginal penetration. Few other sexual practices are discussed and, if they are, people are usually encouraged not to do them.
One consequence of this is that it leads a lot of people to think that their sexual fantasies are weird or unusual because they are turned on by things that appear to fall outside of the mainstream. When people think their fantasies are uncommon, they tend to keep these thoughts to themselves and, often, harbor some shame or guilt about them.
This can also lead people to have less than satisfying sexual encounters because they aren’t getting what they really want. This can have spillover effects in a relationship, too: when neither partner is getting what they want, this can lead to a loss of passion and desire for sex.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. It turns out that most of us are fantasizing about the same things. Many of those things we think of as rare or unusual are actually quite common, which means that pretty much everyone is at least a little bit kinky.
This is something I’ve seen in my own research on sexual fantasies. I surveyed 4,175 Americans from across the country about their sexual thoughts for my book
Tell Me What You Want. I asked people to describe their favorite sexual fantasy of all time, as well as to report on how frequently they fantasize about hundreds of different people, places, and things.
In analyzing the contents of people’s favorite fantasies, I found that seven major themes emerged, and it turned out that most people reported having had these fantasies at one time or another. These themes were:
1. Multi-partner sex, as in threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes.
In total, 95% of men and 87% of women reported having fantasized about group sex before, with threesomes being the most popular form.
2. BDSM, or bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism.
Fantasies about consensual power exchange or mixing pleasure and pain were reported by 96% of women and 93% of men.
3. Novelty and adventure, or trying new and different things in the bedroom and beyond.
Overall, 97% of men and women reported having fantasized about doing things that added some extra thrill or excitement to sex, such as having sex in a semi-public setting, like on the beach or in a forest.
4. Sexual taboos: doing something that is socially or culturally forbidden.
Most people have fantasized about doing something they’re not “supposed” to do, with 87% of men and 72% of women reporting this fantasy. Among the more common taboos reported were fetish-type fantasies.
5. Passion and romance, or emotionally connecting with a partner.
Fantasies about feeling desired or meeting deeper emotional needs were almost universal, with 99% of men and women reporting having fantasized about this.
6. Being in some kind of sexually open relationship.
Polyamory, swinging, cuckolding, and other forms of consensual non-monogamy are common elements in people’s sexual fantasies, with 91% of men and 80% of women having fantasized about this before.
7. Exploring your gender and/or sexuality.
Self-exploration is a common fantasy theme. People often use their fantasies as an opportunity to break free of traditional gender roles and the rigid boxes they’re sometimes put into by their sexual identity labels. For example, among women who identified as exclusively heterosexual, 59% had fantasized about a same-sex experience before (among exclusively heterosexual men, the number was 26%).
It’s important to note that about 5% of my sample reported nonbinary gender identities, so I also looked to see whether their fantasies were similar to those of self-identified men and women, and they were. All of the fantasy themes discussed above were common among this group as well, although compared to men and women, nonbinary persons reported more frequent fantasies about BDSM, non-monogamy, and gender exploration.
I should note that there was also a lot of commonality in the sexual fantasies of persons who identified as LGBTQ+ versus heterosexual.
What all of this tells us is that across genders and sexualities, there are far more similarities than there are differences in our fantasies and most people seem to have had some kinky sexual thoughts before.
This points to the importance of expanding our definitions of sex and our understanding of what “normal” is. In doing so, we can help to remove a lot of the shame and guilt people feel about their fantasies, which can open the door to more communication around sexual desire and help people to get more of what they want out of sex.
But first, we need to embrace the idea that we’re all a little bit kinky in some way.
