Redux: Dark Fantasies, Part 1
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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart-sick. The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears. I'm Steve Allman. I'm Cheryl Strayed. This is Dear Sugars. Dear song, won't you please share some little sweet days with me? I check my bell by going to sugar.

Hi, Steve. Hi, Cheryl.

Okay, so I'm going to tell a little story. We've got to go back to the summer of 1997. Oh, yeah. I was living for the summer in Taos, New Mexico, and I was dating Mr. Sugar, Brian, the person to whom I am now married. And we were great lovers and great friends, like we are still. Yes, you are. But, you know, by the summer of 1997, we'd been together a couple of years. And I was, you know, wanting to keep things...

interesting and also deepen our intimacy. So we're on a walk and I get this idea that we should each share with each other a sexual fantasy. Because until then, to me, and I think I still believe this, I thought sexual fantasy was this very private realm. You don't dare tell anyone what you're thinking. But I thought, what better person to tell than my lover? So I say to him, let's

Each share one fantasy on our walk. Tell me you made him go first. No, I made it, you know, that sort of novice error of going first. Rookie mistake. Rookie mistake of going first. And this was a fantasy. I mean, this made me blush. I'm blushing now just even thinking about telling you and all of the Dear Sugars listeners. But it's one of my earliest fantasies that when I was a teenager, I would conjure.

Okay, so it's the Super Bowl. Okay, that's the first part of the fantasy. The Super Bowl is on TV, and I'm in some house, like some nice kind of upper middle class house. And there's a whole bunch of men who are watching the Super Bowl.

This sounds wild. I can't imagine such a thing. No, but these men are also, they're dressed, all of them, in like business suits. So they're either businessmen or they're wearing like turtlenecks, kind of intellectual, like sophisticated men. And I am wearing really sexy lingerie.

And I have to, I'm serving them drinks. And they're basically kind of like they're appreciating me, but in this kind of powerful, indifferent way. And I'm giving them drinks and they're like, you know, kind of looking at me and like saying little things to me as I serve them while the game is on. Okay. And that's the fantasy. So...

And it's like so... I know it's an awful, horrible, embarrassing fantasy. It was, for whatever reason, that just turned me on so much, like from the beginning. And it took me a long time to say that out loud and get to this place where I could laugh with you. All of this feeling of being embarrassed about that was shame. Because, of course...

You know who I am. Yeah. I am not going to get scantily clad and serve you drinks while you watch the football game. I'm not like every layer of this narrative. And it's interesting to me now that I've analyzed it. There's football. There's the men dressed in these kind of power suits. Yeah. And then there's me, this subservient female who is a sex object. Right. And literally serving them, you know, and there for their pleasure. Yep. And nothing about who I am.

Yeah.

And the ways that we feel in response to those things, the complicated feelings we have when we create those sexual fantasies that seem to come out of nowhere, but probably come out of somewhere very deep within us. It's interesting though, Cheryl, as you were telling this story, what I am fascinated by, if you want to really know somebody, is what's the fantasy that you're afraid to tell?

Right. Because that's the one that's revealing the hidden parts of you. I think also it's significant that you are in a happy, engaged relationship two years in with wonderful, probably looking like Bon Jovi at that age. Brian was looking, still looks somewhat like Bon Jovi. One of the things that I think Freud got terribly wrong, he said that only people who are unhappy have fantasies. In fact...

Fantasies aren't the compensation for the lack of sexual opportunities. In part, they're just a different form of our libidinal drives. And I prefer this formulation, which is from De Sade. And this is what he has to say. How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination. In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours. Not a single creature resists us. We devastate the world. We repopulate it with new objects, which in turn we emulate.

The means to every crime is ours and we employ them all. We multiply the horror a hundredfold. It's like a hundred. There's a hundred things.

Cheryl Strayed's, you know, serving those drinks. It is only by enlarging the scope of one's tastes and one's fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life's thorns. Wow. That's a beautiful vision of the sort of liberation of fantasy, but the problem is, are

our fantasies

don't always operate like that. We all know that there's sort of shallow fantasies, which are sort of fleeting, but then there are fantasies that we obsess about. There's certain persistent fantasies that really wind up haunting us. And they're revealing of who we are, but it's also that much more terrifying. So that's the kind of letter that we want to take on today. Now, you didn't ask me what Brian's fantasy was on that walk. What did he say to me after I told him about the Super Bowl and the drinks and the men in suits? Hit me.

Okay. I told you I'd made a rookie mistake. Uh-oh. Yeah. So he says to me, after we finished, you know, sort of unpacking the whole Super Bowl scenario, he says, you know, Cheryl, I just think about making love with you, which is the biggest lie a man has ever told. And to this day, all these years later, I say to him, come on, Brian, just come on, just tell me. He's like, no. Why don't I read the first letter? Let's do it.

Dear Sugars, I'm a 29-year-old female who has been in a relationship with a loving, understanding, and supportive man for 10 years. He's the most sane, normal, level-headed, even-keeled person I know. The problem that I'm having, have always had, is my sexual fantasies. I know that sexual fantasies are normal and that I would never act on any of these things. Ever since I started being a sexual being, that is, masturbating at around 17, I've had terrible fantasies.

incest of every kind, teachers having sex with their underage students, gangbangs in public bathrooms. I cannot get turned on without thinking of these storylines. I can't come unless the characters in my fantasies have finished up with Daddy or Mommy or Mrs. Smith. Why is this happening to me, and how do I make it stop? Did something bad happen to me that I have repressed so much I don't even have a hint of it?

The thing is, it works. I know I can drop myself into one of these fantasies and be turned on instantly. But I also think that I'm finally fed up with it. I'm sure I need to go to a sex therapist eventually. But can I ever really be healed of these visions? I want to be able to be connected to my good, sane boyfriend. I want to think of him and only him when I'm having sex with him.

I want my orgasm to be because of the physical and emotional connection I have with him, and not with my naughty subplot. I've never told my boyfriend or anyone else about these fantasies for obvious reasons. Who would fess up to such a sexual secret? My question is, do I need to tell him? I know it would hurt him deeply that I haven't ever told him in the 10 years we've been together. I'm sure he would feel betrayed and scared and confused and bewildered.

Not to mention emasculated, realizing that all those orgasms weren't quite for him. How do I tell him? I feel like a monster. Help me, please. Signed, Fed Up With Fantasy. Wow. Well, the first thing we have to tell Fed Up With Fantasy is you are not a monster.

And actually, in answering your letter, Fed Up With Fantasy, we're going to get a little bit of help from Dr. Ian Kerner. He's a psychotherapist and sexuality counselor who specializes in sex therapy and couples therapy. He's also the New York Times bestselling author of She Comes First, a sex advice book. Which I love the title of that book. I've pretty much lived my life by that principle. Yeah.

As do I. All right. Viva la vulva. Yeah. So you can tell we have Ian here in the studio with us. We're so pleased to have you to talk about this issue. And Fed Up With Fantasy, she is amazing.

tortured about what I'm going to think are pretty common fantasies. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look on the internet, incest-based fantasies are really probably the number one fantasy that's out there. And it's amazing how many patients I see who are so perturbed by their particular fantasies and they have such universal themes. And so she's really not alone. You know, when I was hearing you talk

the letter, one thing that I also really thought about was sort of just the basic function of a fantasy. And, you know, especially when looking at the female sexual brain, studies have shown that as women are getting increasingly aroused and getting close to or having orgasms, that parts of the female brain that are associated with stress and, you

that those parts of the brain kind of deactivate and dim and turn off. And so the

The premise is sort of that the female parts of the female brain kind of need to turn off for the sexual brain to turn on. And so, you know, what I'm really seeing here is that this person's fantasies are kind of performing a basic and vital function, which is to create a level of psychological arousal and stimulation that kind of hopefully maybe distract her from some of those anxieties or...

or inhibitions. And so I'm hearing in the letter that she thinks of her fantasies as intrusive.

But really, her fantasies are her allies, and they're really helping her to experience pleasure in her own body. And so I really would just love to encourage her to reframe this fantasy as not being distressing or intrusive, but really being sort of an ally for helping her experience the pleasures of arousal. Right. Well, let's first of all, you said incest fantasies are among the most common, perhaps the most common. Mm-hmm.

I think that's disturbing for a lot of people, even though they have those fantasies. And I remember when I was a teenager and first starting to have sexual fantasies, when I would think about anything in that territory, it really freaked me out. And it freaked me out on a couple of levels. One, it's repulsive. Another, I...

experienced sexual abuse as a child. I've experienced incest. And so there's another layer for me that that's disturbing. And I would love to hear you talk to us about that. Like, why do we fantasize about taboo things like incest when we know in our lives not only would we never do that, but even that those things are harmful and may have harmed us? Right. Well, I mean, I think that, you know, in a different kind of world, we might actually...

have all sorts of different types of sexual attractions that we might act on, but we sort of live in a society in which, you know, many of our attractions or desires really are repugnant and are not socially warranted. And so I think we build up, you know, very strong boundaries around our social behavior, right?

But it doesn't mean that we don't still, in our own sexual underground, feel a whole range of different types of attractions and desires and interests that might not be societally acceptable. So I think that fantasies...

in a healthy way, uh, really allow us to explore taboos that intrigue us and attract us and turn us on that we can't possibly explore or actualize in our real lives. But I do want to just comment, Cheryl, that you also said that you were a survivor of, um, sexual abuse. And, uh,

I've also found that for many patients who experienced sexual trauma and pain, that fantasy is a really viable way to convert feelings of powerlessness and feelings of pain into a sense of

pleasure and power. And so I think that in that sense, sometimes fantasies can have a healing effect on our trauma. And I don't know exactly what this person's personal background is. So I can imagine somebody who is...

using fantasy as a way of converting that pain into a kind of pleasure and developing mastery over her own trauma. Or I could imagine somebody who just wants to enjoy a fantasy because it really brings a high level of exciting psychogenic stimulation that they're not going to achieve in other ways. Yeah, and she does say, did something bad happen to me that I've repressed? Which I think it's really interesting because, you know,

I was asking this question when I was younger as a sexual abuse survivor. She's asking it as somebody who hasn't been sexually abused. And we're both saying, like, why and where did this come from? And we don't want it. Are you more likely to have incest fantasies if you have been sexually abused? Or is this really just something that's...

that's in all of our minds in some subconscious way, and they rise up during those times. Well, I think it's a little sad sometimes that as soon as we ask, why do I have these fantasies or what do they mean, we go back to a place of potentially having some kind of trauma. And so we cast our fantasies in a somewhat pathologized, problematized light. I mean, most people say, oh,

I have this crazy fantasy. Do you think I suffered some sort of trauma as a child? I don't remember it, but maybe I did. But rarely do I hear anybody say, you know, I had such a happy childhood and such a creative childhood, and I love to sing and play and dance and pretend and act, and now I have this rich, crazy fantasy life that is sort of, you know, just an extension of sort of the richness of my life. So I think...

Very often we are distressed by our fantasies. They run counter to our own social boundaries and our own sense of ethics. And so we immediately look to pathologize our fantasies. But to answer your question, also –

People experience trauma, and not everyone who experiences trauma goes on to be impaired by their trauma. Some people are able to master their traumas, and some people don't and can't. And I think when we are unable to heal our own traumas, when we're unable to soothe ourselves,

it is possible that the trauma will find its way more likely into a fantasy. And so I have found with my patients who have unresolved trauma that sometimes those traumatic experiences do convert themselves into a kind of fantasy. Interesting. In talking to fed-up fantasies, let's say she walks into your office, one of the things that she's struggling with is

Okay, maybe you can tell her, look, fantasies are the repository of the forbidden, but they're also something that help you feel good in your body. These are not something that are abnormal. Everybody has their share and so forth. You can tell her that, but she would still might say to you, okay, but doctor,

It's been 10 years I've been with this boyfriend and I haven't been able to tell him about these fantasies. And I feel in some sense that the orgasms I'm having don't even belong to him or I'm in this other place.

How do you negotiate that? That is the boundary sort of between your own fantasy life and a lover who you want to share everything with. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Steve, one of the first things I ask my patients who come in with sexual problems and a sexual problem they might have might be their own very distressed relationship with their fantasy life. Right.

I'll often ask them to tell me about the last time they had sex with their partner and to what extent are they able to generate psychological stimulation in the relationship. It's not uncommon for people to really rely on their own fantasies during sex when there's a lack of psychological stimulation in the relationship. So if she's not sharing fantasies with her partner, if she's not excited by the sex, if she's not that interested in the sex,

If the sensations that are being created in her body aren't particularly strong or compelling enough to really allow her to unwind and get into that state of deactivation, then it makes a lot of sense why these fantasies are so front of mind for her because her body and her brain are still looking for ways for her to get aroused. And it's probably not coming out of the relationship. She didn't describe her partner as...

You know, being creative or spontaneous or fun-loving. Not that he's not those things, but the words that she used were... Sane and normal and even-keeled and level-headed. Exactly. Which is a very polite way of saying, you know, he's not a wild, imaginative, you know...

a set of adjectives that are very praising, but they do suggest that he's somebody who's on the straight and narrow. And so by contrast, she's saying, well, what happens if I say to my sane, level-headed, stabilizing boyfriend, you

I don't want to share a fantasy. And then the fear would be maybe she's cast away or he loses trust or they lose the connection they do have. How do you deal with that? Well, I would say it's essential that she opens up a kind of psychogenic bridge, meaning stimulation that's psychological. So that means whether they're able to share a fantasy, whether they're able to verbalize during sex, whether they're able to really comment on what they're experiencing in their own body that feels great,

Sometimes when somebody says to me, have a fantasy, there's no way I can share it with my partner. He's just going to think I'm the biggest perv in the world. I have a little trick that works 75% to 80% of the time where I say, you know, how about you just tell your partner you had a really sexy dream about them last night? And you just say, you know, I don't know where my unconscious was, but I just had this totally like crazy sexy dream about you and –

And it kind of gives you permission to sort of start to talk about it. And the thing that I think is amazing about

fantasies amazing about dirty talk is that unlike almost any other conversation that we have, it can really trigger a physiological response in the body. Right. I mean, maybe if we talk about food, if you talk about food to my wife, like that'll get her excited. But in general, if I start talking in a sincere way, um, about something that I find really sexy, um, about my wife or about our relationship or about my fantasies, um,

it will trigger a physiological response. It will begin the process of arousal. Absolutely. I mean, this is why we talk dirty to each other. That's right. And, you know, it's absolutely a key part of, I think, a lot of people's sex lives. That's right. And, you know, I really have to say, though, I relate so deeply to Fed Up With Fantasy because you're 29 years old and you've been with this guy since you were 19. Right. And so right now, what I want to say to you is you have grown up

sexually, and your relationship, I think, hasn't yet. Right. You know, when you, when I was 19, I

I would have never, ever told anyone about that Super Bowl fantasy, okay? Because I would have been so ashamed, exactly like this letter writer. And in some ways, you know, the relationship I was in in my early 20s, you know, failed because of that. Because I wanted to have hot sex with other people because I couldn't have hot sex with him. Because I couldn't tell him what was hot to me because I was ashamed of what was hot to me.

And so what I want to say to you, you know, you're so mortified, you think your boyfriend's going to reject you if you tell him what you're thinking when you guys are in bed together. And my guess is he's going to be wildly aroused. Yeah. That is going to turn him on to hear you say what you're thinking about, and he'll tell you maybe what he's thinking about. And then you can do, you use that word, which turns me on. So what's an erotic bridge? What's the bridge? Psychogenic. Psychogenic. Psychogenic bridge. I love it.

That's dirty talk for Cheryl Strayed. You're saying psychogenic bridge, and I'm like, wow. Yeah, that means just talk dirty to me. Like, let me into that dirty little mind of yours. And that's sexual maturity, when you actually have the nerve to stand in that, what's ultimately a really vulnerable place.

And say, you know who I am. I trust you. I trust you with my body. I trust that you respect me and love me. And I'm going to tell you these crazy things about what's going on in my mind. Well, you know what's interesting too is I think sharing a fantasy is so vulnerable. I mean, gosh, I mean, you can get naked during sex. You can be tied up during sex. You could be

in 50 different positions. And I think sharing a fantasy, just letting words come from your mouth, can be much, much more vulnerable. And so sometimes when somebody doesn't feel ready to share a fantasy...

I'll say, well, instead of having a face-to-face experience around fantasy, can you have some sort of side-by-side experience where you're just sort of allowing yourselves to enjoy another person's fantasy or the language of arousal? Can you read some sexy literary erotica together just to create that language between the two of you? Can you...

watch some ethical porn together, which is sort of different than the free stuff. Yes, we've covered that. I'm now a new fan of feminist porn. Yeah. Yeah. And so having that kind of side-by-side experience I've found with a lot of couples is sort of like an easy way to enjoy the trip. Yeah. But I guess I wonder...

You know, is there a possible outcome and maybe fed up with fantasy, this is what you're struggling with, is if I'm honest about my fantasy life, if I let that out of the bag, maybe I have to confront that my level-headed, sane, wonderful, compassionate boyfriend...

isn't ready to go with me. So there's a lot on the line. What do you say to somebody like that who might be framing the situation as, well, if I admit to the fantasies, then I lose my stable boyfriend? Yeah, I mean, I would say, first of all, we don't know what the outcome is, and that could be your anxiety speaking or an amplified version of anxiety.

what might happen. I often encourage people when they're sharing their fantasies, um, if they can to try and maybe share a fantasy. I don't know if any of these fantasies involve her current partner, and that might be difficult, but a lot of times. Now, okay, when do I come into the bathroom? She's like, you're never there. But a lot of people's fantasies do involve their partners. And so for other people who might be listening, you know, I think sometimes if you can really put your own partner at the center, um,

of the fantasy in some way and make it an experience that involves both of you in some ways. That's powerful. I also feel that like all of these fantasies kind of take us very quickly into sort of the deep end of our sexuality. But maybe there's ways to express it where you're sort of just kind of dipping some toes into the shallow end with your partner. Yeah, you can tell the fantasy light. ♪

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So we're back and we're continuing our conversation with Dr. Ian Kerner about this letter from a woman who signs herself fed up with fantasy. So fed up with fantasy, one thing she says is that she's sure that she needs to see a sex therapist because she's so terrible that she's in these fantasies. And, you know, I'm curious what you think, Ian. Yeah.

What I'll say is if she sees a sex therapist, it's certainly not for the reason that she cites. It's certainly not that she needs to rid herself of these fantasies. I would say she needs to rid herself of the shame and anxiety she has around these fantasies. And the other thing I worry about is that

So many therapists these days are also sort of steeped in this addiction model and that anything that seems a little bit distressing or pathologizing is very quickly labeled sex addiction and treated pathologically. So I would also encourage anybody that's looking for a sex therapist technology.

To A, to start with the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists because it's a very sex-positive organization. And to really research the therapist that they're going to be speaking with because I would worry that she could have the wrong therapist and end up in a worse place. Restigmatized in a way. Yeah. Yeah.

So, one of the things that Fed Up With Fantasy brings up is this idea that, you know, she's thought such terrible things in her fantasy life, that she's a monster. She says she's a monster. She says her boyfriend will feel betrayed and scared and confused and bewildered, all these things.

And I'm curious if there is a line. I mean, I know it's not in this letter, but if you ever have somebody come into your office and they tell you their fantasies and you think, this is too much. I guess what I'm saying is I think that what we, the conclusion the three of us have come to about this is, you know, anything goes in our fantasy lives. That's what we're essentially saying. But what I'm curious about is, is that true?

And where is the line? Yeah. I honestly believe that the line is when you cross the line into some kind of behavior that could cause distress to you or to somebody else or to violate the law. I mean, I really am not the thought police. You know, maybe as we can continue to talk, though, sometimes I find that—

certain fantasies become rigid. Things that might just be a theme or a channel or an interesting fantasy start to become rigid the more somebody is really experiencing a lot of distress in their life. And so I don't think I could ever really say I draw the line around content in terms of what somebody's fantasizing or imagining. But if it is really causing them...

crippling levels of distress um

then I would start to feel that it's crossing a line and that this person is really tragically impaired. I've come to agree with you, but it took me time. And that's why I'm really responding very directly to Fed Up With Fantasy about her age, because I do think that it took me at least the better part of a decade or more to not feel distressed, not feel anxious anymore.

about some of the things that were going on in my mind that were contrary to who I am or to anything I would ever do, any of my ethical or moral values. And so, you know, and I think that that's a really great line, you know, that there is a difference between behavior and thought. And also, I think it's very particular. You know, I don't walk around having sexual fantasies

you know, when I'm not engaged in sexual activity. I think if I were haunted always of these sort of sexual, you know, images throughout my day, I would maybe think I had other issues that I needed to examine. But yeah, I'm with you. ♪

So, dear listeners, we got so wrapped up into our conversation about this letter with Dr. Ian Kerner that we realized we're going to make this not one episode, but two. And you'll have to listen next week to hear that second letter and more of our discussion about our darkest sexual fantasies. Tune in next week. ♪♪♪

Dear Sugars is produced by the New York Times in partnership with WBUR. Our producer is Alexandra Lee Young. Our editor and managing producer is Larissa Anderson. Our executive producer is Lisa Tobin. And our editorial director is Samantha Hennig. We recorded this show at Argo Studios in New York City with Paul Ruest. Our mix engineer is Josh Rogeson.

Find us at nytimes.com slash dearshugars. And please send us your letters at dearshugars at nytimes.com. That's dearshugars, plural, at nytimes.com. And if you want to read the column every week, we answer an additional letter on the topic that we've discussed on the podcast. You can find that at nytimes.com slash thesweetspot. That's on Tuesdays and on Thursdays in the style section. ♪