Dr Alverston Bailey, Contributor

Do you experience flights of fantasy when you have sex, followed by intense guilt that you might have betrayed your partner? You might be surprised to know that sexual fantasies are far more common than you think, and can in fact add value to your relationship.

A sexual fantasy, also called an erotic fantasy, is deliberate patterns of thought aimed at creating or enhancing sexual feelings; it is mental imagery that an individual considers erotic.

The makeup and purpose of fantasies vary from person to person. They can be elaborate stories or quick mental flashes of sexual imagery. Fantasies are used to facilitate sexual arousal to achieve an orgasm, simply to pass time or to help a person fall asleep.

They allow people to imagine themselves in roles they do not normally have, such as power, innocence, and guilt.

Many couples share their fantasies to feel closer and gain more intimacy and trust, and to become more aroused, thus achieving a more powerful physical response. But sharing fantasies can be risky and create the opposite effect.

Howard Ruppel, PhD, chancellor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, states that fantasies live in the mind. "It's not a fantasy if you go out and do it. Thoughts during sex are not a reflection of your real-life mindset."

The late Alex Comfort, MD, in his classic best-seller The Joy of Sex, advises that sex offers the opportunity "to experience things you can't possibly act out".

We know that sex generally starts in the brain. So an active imagination can mean you're ready for sex before anything physical has happened. Therefore, desire i and arousal is much quicker. Some people find an active fantasy life can add novelty to a long-standing sexual relationship. This can be quite helpful if your partner is not as sexually adventurous as you are.

The misconceptions about sexual fantasies began with Freud who, in 1908, declared that "a happy person never fantasises, only a dissatisfied one". Other psychiatrists later expanded on this theme, and called it the deficiency theory.

But Leitenberg and Henning, in a report in Psychological Bulletin, states that even though "people still believe that fantasies are compensation for lack of sexual opportunity, that if your sex life was adequate, you would not have to fantasise, it has been shown that frequent fantasisers have very satisfying sex lives. They have sex more often, and engage in a wider variety of erotic activities than infrequent fantasisers".

The association between fantasies and a healthy sex life is so strong, in fact, that it is now considered abnormal not to have them.

How prevalent are fantasies?

About five per cent of men and women say they have never had a sexual fantasy. Most adults say they first remember fantasising between the ages of 11 and 13.

In one study, researchers asked people at random times during the day whether sex had crossed their minds during the past five minutes. Among 14- and 15-year-olds, 57 per cent of boys and 42 per cent of girls said yes; among 56- to 64-year-olds, 19 per cent of men and 12 per cent of women answered yes.

Men have a greater variety of fantasies. Asked to check off all those they had experienced in the past three months (on a list of 55), male collegians indicated 26 variations of fantasy.

Leitenberg also reports that "one in four people feel guilty about their fantasies while making love to their partners". Even among sexually liberated groups like college students, 22 per cent of women and eight per cent of men said they usually try to repress the feelings associated with fantasy.

The most common female fantasies are:

Having sex with an existing partner

Giving and receiving oral sex

Having sex with a new partner

Romantic or exotic locations

Doing something forbidden

Being submissive

Reliving a previous experience

Being found irresistible

Trying new sexual positions

Having sex with a co-worker

Being watched by a voyeur

Many women are excited with the idea of being watched, and lusted after, by unknown persons through a window.

Having sex with multiple people

Having random sex with a stranger. In this fantasy, she's walking down the street, and randomly stops to willingly have sex with a tall, dark, unknown man.

Being tied up/tying someone else up

Being videotaped. Like the voyeur fantasy, she may visualise being caught naked on camera, either knowingly or unknowingly.

The most common male fantasies are:

Having sex with an existing partner

Giving and receiving oral sex

Having sex with more than one person

Being dominant

Being passive and submissive

Reliving a previous experience

Watching others make love

Trying new sexual positions

Fantasies are an essential part of our sexual repertoire. It is not a sign of sexual inadequacy or deprivation. Fantasies are associated with a healthy, happy sex life. Remember, as Leitenberg reminds us, "the people who have the most sexual problems fantasise least".

Dr Alverston Bailey is a medical doctor and immediate past president of the Medical Association of Jamaica. Send comments and questions to editorial@gleanerjm.com or fax 922-6223.