Is it normal to fantasize about women when you’re heterosexual?
Dr. Catherine Solano: Well yes, it is normal and even banal. Fantasies are not necessarily desires to realize a fantasy in real life, but exciting thoughts, words or inner movies. This is why one can be heterosexual and have homosexual fantasies. We also know that homosexual people, men or women, can have heterosexual fantasies. So, in terms of fantasies, the catalog of possibilities is very wide, and one can therefore feel as exciting something that one does not particularly want to realize.
Without fantasizing when I’m alone, I don’t get an ejaculation. Will it be a problem when I have a partner?
This shouldn’t be a problem for you. Indeed, to trigger ejaculation, most men use what is called an ejaculatory fantasy, allowing the excitement to be taken up a notch to cause the click leading to ejaculation. On the contrary, this fantasy can be very useful to you: during a sexual relationship as a couple, it can help you slow down your ejaculation (by avoiding calling it into your thoughts) or, conversely, allow you to decide on the moment of your ejaculation (by summoning this fantasy into your thoughts). This is something that we sexologists teach men to help them better control their ejaculation.
A concern all the same: if you only view pornography as a medium, be aware that it fixes the images more than the imagination. The triggering of your ejaculations could become dependent on these video images, therefore impossible to obtain without pornographic images, which could prove to be embarrassing as a couple.
Is it normal not to have fantasies?
When we don’t have fantasies, they are most often prevented from occurring, and not because our brain is incapable of activating them. Thus, there are medical situations where fantasies are blocked:
- During treatments inhibiting the libido, for example with antihormones (in the case of breast or prostate cancer, among others);
- During a depression;
- During very great fatigue (burn-out, excessive mental load, infectious or chronic illness);
- In the months following childbirth.
Otherwise everyone has fantasies. For those who think they never fantasize, there are several scenarios:
- Their fantasies are blocked by negative thoughts: fear of sexuality, disgust with sexuality, idea that sexuality is unhealthy (often linked to education);
- Fantasies are blocked by negative experiences: pain during sex, difficult love relationships, history of sexual assault, recurrent fungal infections…
Some people also fantasize in such a natural way that they don’t realize they are fantasizing. We hear so much about bizarre fantasies that what is natural can seem insignificant. An example: when a lover has an appointment with his beauty, he can fantasize about what they can do together. These erotic thoughts are already fantasies. You can also fantasize about an erotic memory afterwards. It is far from the imagery of the most astonishing fantasies!