Men’s sexual fantasies tend to be more active and aggressive than women’s (Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004). They are often more frequent and impersonal, dominated by visual images. These fantasies move quickly to explicit sexual acts and often focus on the imagined partner as a sex object. They generally include visualizing more body parts, specific sexual acts, group sex, a great deal of partner variety, and less romance.
Men use more sexual fantasies that involve someone other than their current partner than women do (Hicks & Leitenberg, 2001). Unlike female fantasies, male sexual fantasies often involve doing something to someone else. The five most common sexual fantasies for men include engaging in different sexual positions; having an aggressive partner; getting oral sex; having sex with a new partner; and having sex on the beach (Maltz & Boss, 2001). Here is a sexual fantasy from a 20-year-old male:
My sexual fantasy is to be stranded on an island with beautiful women from different countries (all of them horny, of course). I’m the only male. I would make all of them have multiple orgasms, and I would like to have an everlasting erection so I could please them all nonstop. (Author’s files)
Sexual fantasy is used by heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual men. For gay and bisexual men, the most common sexual fantasies were receiving oral sex from another man, being manually stimulated by another man, engaging in anal intercourse, and kissing another man’s lips. When asked about his favorite sexual fantasy, one 21-year-old gay man reports:
My favorite sexual fantasy consists of a purely coincidental meeting between myself and an old friend from high school, Jason. We would eventually end up at my house and talk for hours about what each of us had been up to for the last few years. Eventually, the conversation would become one of his talking about trouble with a girlfriend or something of that nature. Jason tells me that he was always aware that I was gay and that he had been thinking about that a lot lately. He tells me that he has always wondered what it would be like to have sex with another man. I offer to have sex with him. He agrees and we engage in passionate, loving sex. (Author’s files)
Like older women, older men also use sexual fantasy. For some older men, fantasy is necessary to reach orgasm. One 60-year-old man says he fantasizes about
. . . the person I met at a party, the hitchhiker picked up on a long trip, the teenager wanting an adult to take her to an R-rated movie. . . . Such things don’t happen to me except in fantasies. . . . Yet the excitement about it all has enough power to suggest yes, I’d like to try it—and know I never will!
(Brecher et al., 1984, p. 387)
Personal Voices