Fantasy: Your Safety Net

In my clinical practice, I do a great deal of work with individuals who struggle with sexual issues.  They may have had an affair, or they may have imagined having one, perhaps with someone at work, a neighbor, or even an in-law.  As you can imagine, there is often a great deal of guilt associated with these thoughts.

Of course, such thoughts are what we usually refer to as "fantasy".  Just the mention of "fantasy", however, is enough to fill make many people with feelings of anxiety and guilt.  It's as if they had already acted upon the promptings of their imagination.  For instance, a patient may come into therapy and confess that he's obsessed with a female coworker.  When he and his wife make love, he's actually imagining having sex with the other woman.  And, consequently, he's consumed with guilt, as if he has betrayed his wife with a real-life physical and emotional relationship.

Now this is a tricky topic.  And people will disagree on whether or not this kind of behavior constitutes betrayal.  One of my rules of thumb for which types of fantasies are "safe" and which can be potentially damaging to a marriage or committed relationship is how much access you have to the object of your fantasy in real life.  If you're imagining being with Angelina Jolie or Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt or Kim Kardashian, then you're on relatively safe ground.  For virtually all of us, the likelihood that we'll even meet these people, let alone become romantically involved with them, is close to zero.  These fantasies, however, can actually help couples through rather stale periods in their marriage.  The fantasy of being attractive to and desired by a celebrity can maintain a sense of vitality and interest.

On the other hand, if you're fantasizing repeatedly about someone with whom you're in close contact--a coworker, a neighbor, someone you play on an office sports team with, someone with whom you volunteer for a charitable cause--you could be in dangerous territory.  After all, you have real and repeated opportunities for deepening relationships with these people.  You can begin taking lunches with coworkers more frequently; you can sign on for extra projects with someone who's part of a charitable organization; you can look for opportunities to interact more frequently with a neighbor, and so on.

And, then, of course, there are our day-time non-sexual fantasies.  These fantasies tend to revolve around issues of achievement, self-esteem, and self-worth.  They may have to do with professional accomplishments and how we're valued by our peers.  For instance, do we see ourselves as perhaps doing our bosses' job better than he or she does?  Such fantasies can inspire us to improve our performance in our own spheres of employment.

And so, fantasy is a vast emotional terrain that allows us to explore possibilities in different aspects of our lives.  We can play out different roles and with different people.  It's important to consider the extent to which sharing fantasies (with anyone but your therapist!) is appropriate, as that can be either threatening or enhancing to a relationship.  The risk of sharing fantasies, however, is a subject for another time.