Are Unusual Sexual Fantasies Normal? What Research Says

People often imagine they’re the only ones with a fantasy they’d never say aloud. Yet a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine asked 1,516 adults about 55 sexual fantasies and found that many ideas commonly labeled unusual were far from rare. Only two fantasies met the researchers’ strict statistical definition of rare across the groups they studied.

The study was based on an online sample, so it cannot tell us exactly how common every fantasy is throughout the population. But it does challenge the careless habit of equating an unusual thought with something wrong. Having a fantasy is not the same thing as wanting to act on it, and private imagination must be distinguished from real-life consent and safety.

Rather than asking whether a fantasy is socially respectable, a more useful question is whether it causes distress, interferes with daily life or involves risk of harm. Shame is a poor substitute for understanding. What happens in someone’s imagination need not define the person they choose to be.

Further reading: What someone enjoys imagining need not define their real-life wishes. See also what three studies reveal about women’s pornography preferences.