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Why Discuss Sexual Fantasies?
After miles of wandering around in the dark, a weary traveler enters a lonely gas station. The attendant is perched on a stool behind the cash register with her eyes glued to the pages of a paperback novel.
Attempting to make his presence known, he clears his throat with great exaggeration. “Uh-huh-hum!”
“Yes?” the attendant asks, not bothering to lift her gaze.
“I’m looking for a road map,” the traveler responds.
The attendant’s head pops up, her brown eyes shifting all around the store to see if anyone else is hearing this conversation. With a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face, she responds directly, “No, sir. We don’t carry road maps.”
“Oh, well, can you tell me where another gas station is that might have one?”
Annoyed, the attendant looks up once again and replies emphatically, “You’re not gonna find one around these parts.”
“What do you mean? Surely there’s a road map somewhere in this town that can help me figure out where I’m going!”
“Nope. Road maps don’t exist for this area. And if I were you, I wouldn’t go around asking for one, or else folks are going to assume you’re one of those kinds of people.”
“What do you mean, ‘road maps don’t exist for this area’? Surely this frequently traveled path isn’t uncharted territory! And what do you mean, ‘one of those kinds of people’? What are you talking about?” the traveler asks with great irritation.
“I mean no one is familiar enough with this region to create a road map! If you get caught asking for one, the police will know that you’re one of those people—one who doesn’t know where he’s been and doesn’t know where he’s going! We don’t allow that around here, mister, so get lost!”
“I am lost!” the traveler screams, quickly losing his patience. “That’s why I’m here—asking for a road map!”
“Look, you’re not going to find a road map around here! And if you ask again, I’m calling the cops!” the attendant threatens, hands on hips, eyeballs protruding out of sockets, and neck veins swelling with a combination of adrenaline and righteous indignation.
“This is ridiculous! Am I on Candid Camera? Am I being Punk’d? This can’t be real!” the traveler insists.
Of course, this scenario is a bit on the ridiculous side. But I believe it is a pretty accurate description of what is happening inside the Christian community today. Too many folks are wandering around in a foreign land, some suspecting—but most not even realizing—that they are lost. They have no clear sense of direction. No one they can ask for a road map. Search for one and they may be labeled “one of those kinds of people.”
The foreign land I’m referring to, of course, is this sex-saturated culture we live in, these sexually stimulated (or sexually dormant) bodies we inhabit, and these sexually motivated (or sexually frozen) minds from which we operate. With the promise of heavenly perfection, restoration, and complete redemption yet on the horizon, we are merely lost travelers here and now, trying to get our bearings and make sense of both our sexuality and our spirituality—the common denominators we all share regardless of our age, gender, race, denominational background, education level, economic status, and so on.
Trying to make perfect sense out of two such complex mysteries can feel as frustrating and fruitless as trying to brush our teeth while eating an Oreo. We all have to wonder at times:
• Where do our sexual thoughts come from?
• What do we do with them?
• Where are the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual boundary lines?
• Can we be holy and horny at the same time?
• How far can we go in satisfying these overwhelming longings we sometimes feel?
Or, perhaps, a better question for some to ask is:
• If I’m a sexual being, why do I no longer experience any sexual longings at all?
GETTING OUR BEARINGS
When we have questions about sexuality, we consult the Internet, our medical dictionary, or that friend we have so much dirt on that she wouldn’t possibly tell a soul we’d asked her that question!
Growing up, most of us never bothered consulting our parents, as they would have died of embarrassment and locked us in our rooms until we were forty. And we certainly didn’t ask our spiritual leaders because we figured they probably didn’t even have sex. Besides, they likely would have banned us from the church building altogether if they had found out what kinds of sexual thoughts actually go through our heads . . . even on Sundays!
If sexuality is God’s invention—and it is—then we should be able to consult the church for a road map as we search for answers to our questions about all things sexual. However, if we fear that our request will be met with shock, confusion, anxiety, horror, disgust, suspicion, or judgment, perhaps even with bulging eyes and popping neck veins, then how will we navigate our way through this foreign territory? Although I can’t say this of every spiritual leader or follower of Christ, I think it is safe to say that a large segment of the church seems to have no clue as to where a road map can be found. And if you ask for one, well, you must really be lost! “You must not know Jeesuuuus!” said in my most sarcastic Church Lady voice.
Can we be real for a moment? I mean, really real?
Even those of us who know Jesus very personally and very intimately, those of us who read our Bibles, fast frequently, tithe regularly, and pray up a storm can still feel as if we need a road map to understand our physical, spiritual, and emotional cravings! But I’ve got really great news. We already have such a road map if we’re brave enough to study it.
This road map to understanding both our sexuality and our spirituality is actually composed of our deepest, most intimate personal sexual fantasies. So we’d be smart to examine such land-marks as these:
• Who are the faces in our fantasies?
• What roles do they play?
• What roles do we play?
• What primary emotions do these fantasies elicit and why?
• What event in our history created the need to experience such an emotion?
• How does this fantasy medicate emotional pain from our past or present?
• Why would humans (even Christians!) fantasize about things such as the following:
• viewing pornography or engaging in extramarital affairs
• bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism (as glamorized in the Fifty Shades trilogy)
• prostitution, seduction, or rape
• same-sex trysts, threesomes, and orgies
And the most important question to consider is this:
• Could there be an even deeper spiritual longing beneath our sexual longings?
I’ll pause a moment to let you gasp for air, loosen your tie, relax your jaw, take a drink of water, and regain your composure. You may or may not be comfortable with these topics, but we need to discuss them. We’ve needed to for a l-o-n-g time. As a society, as a church, as couples and single individuals, as men and women, as parents of boys and girls struggling to make sense of their own sexuality, we need to talk about this. Ignoring the elephant in all of our living rooms certainly won’t make it disappear. In fact, ignoring that elephant is causing it to mysteriously grow larger and larger.
Maybe you are just reading this book to learn how to help someone else. If so, good for you! I pray it will give you many sharp tools in your ministry or counseling tool belt. But the best way to help someone else is to help yourself first.
Before we move on with this exploration, let’s pause for a quick quiz to determine just how much we understand about sexual fantasy.
TRUE OR FALSE?
T F 1. The Sexual Revolution of the past forty-plus years is all about sex.
T F 2. The church does an adequate job of teaching Christians how to appropriately assess and discuss the topic of sexual fantasy.
T F 3. All fantasy is inappropriate, unhealthy, and sinful.
T F 4. Sexual fantasy and lust are the same thing.
T F 5. Christians control their sexual thoughts and actions better than others.
T F 6. Sexual fantasies provide a road map to the sexual fulfillment we crave.
T F 7. Sexual fantasies are better left unspoken and unexplored.
T F 8. Sexual fantasy is really just the brain’s way of driving us to do evil things.
T F 9. Anxiety, confusion, or fear over sexual fantasies is not a common issue.
T F 10. Interpreting sexual fantasies isn’t going to solve any of the world’s problems.
Now let’s see how you did!
1. The Sexual Revolution of the past forty-plus years is all about sex. False.
The Sexual Revolution actually isn’t about sex at all. It’s about broken people using other people, desperately trying to medicate their own emotional pain through sexual acts. It’s about loneliness, isolation, rejection, insecurities, codependency, boredom, and selfishness.
God’s intention for sexual intimacy is to provide a wonderful way for two people—forever committed to one another in a marriage relationship—to give to one another through intense pleasure, passion, affirmation, tenderness, mutual trust, and mutual euphoria. Just think of what the world would be like if we were to experience that kind of constructive sexual revolution instead of the destructive one we have experienced!
2. The church does an adequate job of teaching Christians how to appropriately assess and discuss the topic of sexual fantasy. False.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard a single sermon on the roles, the rules, the benefits, or the boundaries of sexual fantasy. Perhaps the reason is that the word fantasy doesn’t appear in the Bible at all, at least not in the several translations I consulted.
The whole topic can be extremely difficult to discuss simply because of our lack of understanding. For example, I recently heard from a gentleman who was quite unhappy with me for addressing the topic of sexual fantasy in my most recent book, The Sexually Confident Wife. We exchanged several cordial e-mails back and forth before I finally thought to ask the question, “If I had used the term sexual thoughts instead of fantasies, would you feel any differently about what I had to say on the topic?”
After a few hours of contemplation, he replied that indeed, we all have sexual thoughts, and that’s a perfectly appropriate thing to discuss. So then I posed the question, “Can you explain to me your perceived difference between a sexual thought and a sexual fantasy?”
Through continued e-mail exchanges, we together considered the following:
• Is it a matter of the content of the thought?
• Is it how the thought makes you feel in response?
• Is it a matter of how many seconds it stays in your head? Perhaps less than two seconds flat and it’s merely a thought, but anything more than 2.1 seconds becomes a fantasy?
We both had to laugh at how difficult it is for Christians to have a clear conversation when we don’t even have a clear vocabulary for the topic! So let’s establish some definitions before we go any further.
Since the Bible doesn’t specifically mention fantasy, let’s consult the dictionary. Dictionary.com defines the word fantasy as:
1. imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.
2. the forming of mental images, especially wondrous or strange fancies; imaginative conceptualizing.
3. a mental image, especially when unreal or fantastic; vision: a nightmare fantasy.
4. Psychology. an imagined or conjured up sequence fulfilling a psychological need; daydream.
5. a hallucination.1
For the purposes of our discussion, I’m going to lean toward the fourth definition—that sexual fantasies are imaginative thoughts that fulfill some sort of psychological need. I believe examining the fantasy for the purpose of discerning the underlying psychological need is absolutely key to helping us control those fantasies before they control us!
3. All fantasy is inappropriate, unhealthy, and sinful. False.
From the time we are small children, we are encouraged by our parents and by society to fantasize. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is one of the most common questions asked of a young child. How else are they to know if they don’t daydream about different roles they could play in society? In this context, fantasy is healthy and even vital to growth.
Consider that. . .
• to fantasize about where to go to college and what to study means that we are intelligent.
• to fantasize about getting more out of our careers means that we are ambitious.
• to fantasize about getting physically fit means that we are health conscious.
• to fantasize about getting more out of our sex lives, well, that means we must be lustful, perverted, sick, and twisted.
Of course, that last statement is simply not true. It is normal and healthy to want the most out of our sex lives, and sometimes fantasy is the best way to achieve that goal—to envision what you might find pleasurable and especially to envision what kind of pleasurable acts you would enjoy offering to your spouse.
As I was discussing this book idea with respected friends and colleagues, one of the most common questions I heard was, “Do you think all fantasy is wrong?” Let me state my position up front. I absolutely do not think that all fantasy is wrong, but those fantasies that push beyond what is socially or spiritually acceptable are most often rooted in childhood trauma or unresolved pain. The goal of this book isn’t to judge whether fantasies are “right or wrong” but, rather, to help people examine sexual fantasies, recognize their roots, and invite God to help them heal their pain.
4. Sexual fantasy and lust are the same thing. False.
Now that we have established a definition for sexual fantasy, let’s talk about lust. Any time the word lust is mentioned in the Bible, it is in reference to craving something that doesn’t belong to the person doing the lusting, such as to “lust after [other] gods” (Exod. 34:15 NLT), “give up your lust for money” (Job 22:24 NLT), or “not to look with lust at a young woman” or “neighbor’s wife” (Job 31:1, 9 NLT).
Lust is never mentioned in the context of a marriage partner wanting to please or be pleased by their spouses. Such desire isn’t lust at all. As we are told in 1 Corinthians 7:9 (NLT), “It’s better to marry than to burn with lust.” In other words, the act of marriage transforms our lustful longings (to have sex with someone we are not yet married to) into longings that are holy, pure, and unequivocally right because marriage is God’s ordained place for those passionate and pleasurable longings to be fully explored and enjoyed. (Of course, there are instances where people begin selfishly using and abusing their marriage partner sexually, so lust is possible in marriage.)
In his book The Bondage Breaker, Neil T. Anderson provides even more insight. He shows that while our sexual thoughts and desires are perfectly normal, they can begin to cross a line. He writes:
Sex is a God-given part of our autonomic nervous system. Normal sexual functioning is a regular, rhythmic part of life. But when Jesus said, “Everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28), He was describing something beyond the boundary of God’s design for sex. The word for lust is epithumos.
The prefix epi means “to add to,” signifying that something is being added to a normal drive. Jesus challenged us not to add onto the God-given sexual drive by polluting our minds with lustful thoughts. The only way to control your sex life is to control your thought life.2
Unfortunately, controlling your thought life is much easier said than done, but I pray this book will help you do just that—by helping you understand (rather than ignore) the sexual thoughts that often surface in your mind.
Another reason I don’t think sexual fantasy and lust are the same thing is that many coaching clients tell me that their sexual fantasies often include something they don’t desire at all. A man who fantasizes (or has a sexual thought) about being with another man often finds the thought rather repulsive, yet it can resurface time and time again. A woman who fantasizes (or who has an occasional sexual thought) about being raped doesn’t really want to be raped. So for the purposes of discussion, not all fantasies can be classified as lustful thoughts. Sexual fantasies are merely thoughts that may be trying to tell us something our minds are not consciously aware of. There is no need to shoot the messengers.
5. Christians control their sexual thoughts and actions better than others. False.
While the answer to this question probably should be true in light of the amazing power we have available to us to resist temptation, I think we have to admit that the answer is all too often false. Christians struggle, just as much as anyone else, with sexual sin, which includes premarital sex, extramarital sex, and pornography usage.
In talking last year with the manager of one Cincinnati hotel, part of a chain that hosts some of the largest Christian conventions in our nation, I discovered that the hotel chain profits greatly from hosting these particular meetings. The conventions are attended each year by hordes of pastors, religious broadcasters, Christian writers, speakers, and musicians. Would you like to guess what is attributed to the hotel’s bottom-line increase during these conferences? According to the manager, purchases of pornographic movies are tremendous!
It is time to stop pretending that Christians don’t struggle with sexual sin. It is easy to see the news and assume that only the most powerful politicians or famous celebrities run the risk of acting out their fantasies in dangerous and destructive ways. But surely “real” people don’t act that way! Especially not “real Christians,” right?
Wrong. My life coaching practice has been composed almost exclusively of Christian women and men who appear very “normal” on the outside. However, as they have given me glimpses into what is going on with them on the inside, it has been heartbreaking to see how their sexual fantasies have led them down some very painful paths, often because they chose to act them out. You will read case studies of many of these clients sprinkled throughout this book.3
6. Sexual fantasies provide a road map to the sexual fulfillment we crave. False.
It is easy to assume that fantasies must be a road map to future fulfillment. If ________ is what I think about, dream about, fantasize about, well, it must be what I want! If it feels that good in the fantasy, I can only imagine how good it’s going to feel in reality!
Yet many have learned (some the hard way) that most fantasies are better left as fantasy—not reality. In fact, some of the fantasizing we do is merely to medicate the emotional pain we have caused ourselves by acting out on previous fantasies. What a vicious cycle. As they say in the recovery movement, “The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over, expecting different results this time.”
This reminds me of a Richard Torregrossa cartoon I saw in Robin Norwood’s book Daily Meditations for Women Who Love Too Much. In the cartoon, a woman is on her hands and knees on the sidewalk underneath a streetlight at night. A police officer approaches and asks, “What are you looking for?”
“My keys,” the woman replies.
“Is this where you lost them?” the officer insightfully inquires.
The woman responds, “No, but it’s the only place I can see to look.”
Sometimes we think our sexual fantasies are the only places we can find the fulfillment we crave because they are the only places we can see to look, but sexual fantasies are not accurate road maps for discovering what we want in the present or future. They are, however, excellent road maps into the past.
Why would we want to go there? So that we can recognize and heal the unresolved pain that often drives us to do some pretty stupid things. Only then can we fully integrate our sexual fantasies and our Christian faith to become the women, men, wives, husbands, moms, and dads God created us to be.
7. Sexual fantasies are better left unspoken and unexplored. False.
Granted, certain individuals have tried to openly share some of their most troubling sexual fantasies only to face harsh consequences, such as:
• Olivia, who was asked to resign her position as a Sunday school teacher when she confessed to her pastor’s wife that she struggled with sexual fantasy and masturbation.
• Kent, whose wife packed her bags and left him when he admitted that he was having a hard time controlling his thoughts about a woman at work.
• Marcia, who admitted to a female friend that she was hooked on lesbian pornography, only to have that female friend encourage her to give lesbianism a try, which produced even more feelings of guilt and shame.
We always run a risk when we choose to be vulnerable about anything sexual. And sometimes it really is better to keep certain things to ourselves . . . at least until we find someone who can truly help us without hurting us first.
But when we do find that person who can help us see beyond the trees and into the forest, the healing it can bring is astounding! And becoming a “safe person” who can help others experience the sexual and spiritual breakthroughs they are looking for is even more rewarding.
Therefore, I’m going to urge you throughout this book not to ignore your own fantasies but to carefully consider their deeper meanings. If we look beyond the fantasies themselves, we can expose the driving forces operating within us that often lead us toward destructive relational patterns. This deeper understanding of ourselves and how we relate with others is an invaluable part of growing, maturing, and finding freedom to fully enjoy our sexuality.
8. Sexual fantasy is really just the brain’s way of driving us to do evil things. False.
I have a dear friend and mentor, Jarratt Major, who is an eighty-year-old licensed marriage-and-family therapist and a retired minister. I have been meeting monthly with him and two other professional counselors for almost four years now, in a group we affectionately refer to as “Shrink Rap,” so called because we are a bunch of shrinks who rap about our own life journeys. Jarratt, considered the padre of the group, has taught us two incredibly valuable nuggets of wisdom that have shaped my thinking and sparked my imagination to write this book:
1. Fantasies are really just the brain’s way of trying to heal itself.
2. If you don’t learn to face your fantasies, they may bite you on the butt as you’re trying to run away from them!4
Grasping these principles has transformed my thought life, enhanced my self-esteem, and even saved my marriage. For example, many years ago, each time a man turned my head I’d panic. Is this destiny’s way of telling me I married the wrong person? Is this the beginning of the end of my marriage? Is an extramarital affair inevitable here? These were the questions I would naively wonder.
Fortunately my husband was always far more understanding of temptations and fantasies than I was. As I tearfully confessed my thoughts and asked him for forgiveness and to hold me accountable, he would often remind me, “Shannon, this is not about you and me. This is about you and your dad.”
This notion has made a lot more sense in light of the two principles Jarratt has shared with me. These fantasies of other, usually older men were really just my brain’s way of trying to heal the hurts of feeling so emotionally distanced from a father who simply didn’t know what to do with a daughter. If I ignored the pain that produced the fantasies, I could have easily fallen into those affairs. Instead, I faced the pain, going through months of intense group and individual therapy to deal with my “daddy issues.”
Now, after forty-five years of life and almost twenty-three years of marriage, I have learned that when my head gets turned and my heart feels drawn toward another man, I don’t need to panic or run to confession. Instead, I’ll approach Greg and ask, “Would you mind holding me like a baby?” As my six-foot-seven husband scoops me up in his arms, I’m reminded that I have all the love I need—all I can handle—wrapped up in this relationship called marriage. But even if I didn’t have a husband at all, the love of my heavenly Father envelops me enough to keep me safe from my own sexual fantasies if I will choose to bask in His presence rather than run toward the object of my fantasy.
Therefore, the question to ask ourselves is never, “How can I fulfill this fantasy?” or even “How can I ignore this fantasy?” but “What can I learn from this fantasy?” and “How can I heal this pain that is causing me to fantasize in this direction in the first place?” Like an alchemist who extracts gold from base metals, we can extract some of the most valuable nuggets of wisdom from the most base of our mental inventory.
9. Anxiety, confusion, or fear over sexual fantasies is not a common issue. False.
Research shows that 84 percent of men and 67 percent of women have sexual fantasies, so I think it’s safe to say that on average, approximately three out of four people have them.5 While I’ve not found a study reporting what percentage of those individuals wrestle with negative feelings about their fantasies, I’d have to guess it is a pretty significant population based on the number of people we hear from each week at www.ShannonEthridge.com, submitting prayer requests such as:
I want to be delivered from sexual fantasies about TV characters. I would love to have a healthy, wonderful relationship with a “real” man that God would love for me to be with. I don’t feel like there is anyone to share this with, so I would like your prayer partners to pray for me. —Jill
I am really struggling with purity. I realize that the only time I really get into sex with my husband is when I fantasize. I crave sex more than he does and am just having a hard time keeping my mind pure. I don’t even know where to begin. I am rereading your book Every Woman’s Battle because I haven’t read it in years, and I know I need some encouragement in this area. Thanks for your prayers. —Katy
My wife is the only child of an alcoholic mother and was raised in a very strict church environment. She has a lot of emotional issues (anger, depression, major mood swings) that make it very difficult for me to feel connected to her sexually. As a result of all of this, I find myself fantasizing like crazy about other women—what they’d be willing to do in bed and the fun we could have together. I know this is dangerous. I just don’t know how to control it. I’ve prayed until I’m blue in the face, so I guess I’m just asking for others to join me in prayer, both for my wife and for me to keep my mind from going places where I know it shouldn’t. —Michael
I am happily married to a wonderful man, but I have a huge crush on my married realtor. I have confided in a few godly girlfriends, and they are praying and holding me accountable. Every time I fantasize about him I regret it and pray and confess, yet I keep slipping back. I can’t seem to take my thoughts captive! I love my husband, our marriage is good, and I am attracted to him. The only thing I can think of that I am getting out of this crush is the ego boost or rush of imagining a new and different man finding me attractive. Our house sale closes soon, but I am worried that I will hang on to my fantasy version of this man for some time. And that if I can’t figure out how to control this crush, a different one may come along in the future and be more dangerous. What if I develop a crush on someone I actually know personally rather than a temporary professional in my life!?!?!? I need to let this guy go in my mind and heart before it damages my marriage. Please pray for me. —Sheryl
If you are a counselor, spiritual leader, or just a friend with a good listening ear, perhaps you are hearing similar pleas. My prayer is that this book can be a reliable compass for you to guide hurting people toward helpful answers and hopeful solutions.
10. Interpreting sexual fantasies isn’t going to solve any of the world’s problems. False.
Consider for a moment some of the biggest relational problems facing society today:
• Marriages that don’t make it
• Families that fall apart
• Children who are caught in the middle and grow up with all kinds of emotional baggage as a result
• The financial pressures of single parenting
• The resulting burdens on our nation’s education and welfare systems
• People who suffer in silence or who look to drugs, alcohol, sex, or anything to numb their pain
The list could go on and on.
There are several possible origins for these difficulties, but often individuals, marriages, and families are breaking down because of unresolved sexual issues. And where do these sexual issues begin? In the human mind. Any sexually charged or relationally destructive words that we have ever spoken, any commitments that we have made or broken, any fantasies that we have conjured up or managed to control—all of these things flow out of the fascinating human brain. And like any other bodily organ, the brain’s main quest is to heal itself from any emotional damage it has experienced in the past.
“What is most hidden in us is also what is most universal. Everyone has secrets that need to be uncovered and healed, and as we face our own, we help create a climate in which others can do the same. As we work on our own healing, we help bring about healing in the world.”6
—Robin norwood
So won’t you join me on this healing journey into the deepest recesses of the sexual mind? Perhaps we’ll discover that our sexual fantasies don’t have to be a big stumbling block that trips us up. They don’t have to send shock waves and painful ripple effects into our families for generations to come. They may actually be more like priceless pearls of wisdom underneath the mounds of mattresses that have been suffocating our society for far too long. And maybe exposing the deeper meaning behind sexual thoughts will remove and redeem these pearls, bringing us the relational peace and rest our minds and marriages long for.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN:
HOW IS FANTASY A FRIEND?
Just the word itself—fantasy—can elicit all kinds of anxiety among Christians. In fact, fantasy seems to be an even more taboo word than sex! But before we throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume that all fantasy is unhealthy, dangerous, and therefore entirely off limits, let’s consider how fantasy can actually be a friend.
1. Fantasy can help numb us to unbearable pain.
When my daughter was a brand-new driver, she hit a tree and did a face-plant into her windshield, requiring twelve stitches to keep her ear attached to her head. As she lay trembling on the emergency room table wide-eyed with fright, I was desperate to help her cope with the pain and trauma of it all. I resorted to fantasy. “Erin, let’s pretend we’re going on a trip to anywhere in the world you want to go! Where to? Australia? Okay! Now tell me who do you want to take with you? Our friends Terrica and Sharon? Absolutely! Who else? Where will you want to take them once we arrive? What will we do there?” The fantasy went on for twenty minutes—long enough for the doctor to finish his sewing project. Through this experience, I was reminded of how our imagination is a gift from God—one that can distract us from great pain when necessary.
2. Fantasy can motivate us toward an established goal.
Amy just lost sixty pounds and feels better (and sexier) than she has in decades. When I asked her how she did it, I expected she’d tell me about an intense workout routine or a special diet she followed. But to my surprise, she replied, “I fantasized my way to my weight loss goal! I just kept imagining at every meal what I’d love to look like by my fiftieth birthday, and I naturally ate less!”
3. Fantasy can help us prepare for a life transition.
Cassie came to me incredibly concerned about whether she should ever get married because the idea of sex was so scary and repulsive to her. In her late twenties, she still experienced such sexual anxiety that she asked, “If I do get married, can I ask him to cut ‘those things’ off?” I inquired what “things” she was referring to and learned that she grew physically ill over the thought of a man’s testicles “bumping up against her” during intercourse. I assured her that no man would ever be willing to do that—not even for his wife—and that when she fell in love, she’d never dream of asking that wonderful man to castrate himself! Indeed, Cassie eventually fell in love and got engaged, but she was still very nervous about the honeymoon (and every night thereafter). So she began preparing herself mentally through the use of fantasy. She envisioned repeatedly that she would enjoy her husband’s body, and vice versa, in very holy and healthy ways, and that there would be absolutely no feelings of anxiety or disgust with any particular body part. After the wedding Cassie proudly proclaimed, “Our honeymoon rocked! Nothing really freaked me out at all, thanks to the mental exercises you recommended!”
4. Fantasy can warn us about a possible future event.
Janie set up a coaching session thinking she’d crossed a horrible line. She was distracted almost daily by thoughts that a particular tall, dark, and handsome stranger may board the train she rode home on. She’d seen him a handful of times but had never interacted with him at all. When I asked what line she had crossed, she admitted to having fantasies that this man might engage her in conversation and that their “accidental tourist” relationship would blossom into a sexual affair. “Is that what you want?” I inquired; she responded with shock and horror. “So if it’s not what you want, could it be that the purpose of the fantasy is simply to warn you that this possibility exists and to encourage you to rehearse an appropriate response?” A few weeks later, this stranger’s spotlight was indeed aimed in Janie’s direction. However, by delivering the exact response she’d been rehearsing, Janie was able to nip a potentially inappropriate relationship in the bud.
5. Fantasy can help us endure separation.
When I speak to military wives, I am always asked the question, “Is it okay for me to fantasize about sex with my husband while he’s deployed?” I usually grab that woman by the shoulders, give her a playful shake, and declare, “You’d better!” Seriously, how could military spouses (both husbands and wives) cope with such a lengthy, painful, and scary separation from one another if they felt sinful entertaining sexual thoughts of one another? There is nothing sinful about healthy sexual thoughts of your marriage partner—ever—even if your spouse is gone to the grocery store for only an hour. But for spouses who have to endure an extended separation, sexual fantasy can keep the home fires burning until a passionate sexual reunion is possible.
6. Fantasy can comfort us as we age.
When I made the announcement on my blog that I was writing this book, I received an e-mail from an anonymous man. He explained, “As we grow older, I enjoy letting my mind wander back to the good old days—back to when my wife would let me boldly stare at her youthful, beautiful body, when we had all the strength and energy required for frequent afternoon delights and weekend sexual marathons, back to when I wasn’t concerned about whether I could maintain an erection until I’d crossed the finish line. Recalling these wonderful times we’ve shared together keeps me from looking at pornography or lusting over other women—(I’m old, but I’m not dead)—so I think fantasy can serve a good purpose.”
Indeed, fantasy can serve many good purposes, so don’t knock it completely until you try it.