Fantasy and safety

Michael Bader, author of Arousal – a really interesting book about how our sexuality works – wrote something to the effect of, the purpose of sexual fantasy is to allow us to feel safe, to create a sense of safety, so that we can achieve – and enjoy – arousal. Those aren’t precisely his words, but they get at the point.

Years ago, I wrote, at length, about my core masturbatory fantasy (at the time). I had a way, at the time, of understanding what fears I was looking to vanquish with my fantasy.

Today, I find myself in a different space. My fears have evolved, my fantasies have evolved. That’s not so say I don’t find the idea of five or fifty women splayed out before me, available for me to ravish with my mouth, my fingers, hungry for my cock, and uninterested in fucking (unless, and except precisely to the extent that, in the moment, I find myself hungry for it). I do. I’d like that very much, please and thank you. But today, I find myself longing for something a little less visceral, less bodily, and a little more… psychological. What I crave today isn’t a sexual act. It’s not a sexual partner. It’s not a configuration of bodies.

Rather, what I seem to find myself wanting, more than anything, is a particular form of sexual relationship characterized by one key feature: the centrality of me in the mind of my partner. Not a solipsistic me-only universe. But a world in which I – my desires, my hungers, my needs, my comfort, my safety – are a the primary preoccupation of one or more female partners.

It’s not hard for me to see the psychic meaning of this. My childhood didn’t feature the experience of being my mother’s primary preoccupation. That’s not a criticism of her. She was a tremendous woman – strong, smart, funny, beautiful, kind. It’s a fact about her mothering. I simply wasn’t the center of her life. Certainly not by the time I achieved sentience; probably not before that, either.

For whatever interesting set of reasons, I seem to have regressed a bit in the years since I first wrote about my core masturbatory fantasy. Back then, I wanted an ocean of women devoted to my pleasure, protecting me from my impotence, and with zero chance of rejecting or abandoning me. The rejection, abandonment, or shame that I defended against with that fantasy was, it feels to me, somehow developmentally later than that which my current craving defends against.

Then, I worried you would leave me, that I would be alone, and that your departure would be my fault somehow – a function of my having wanted too much.

Today, I worry not that you’ll leave, but something far more primal: that you simply won’t be thinking of me. And that, if you aren’t thinking of me, perhaps I may cease to exist.

3 comments

  1. Have always enjoyed mental fantasy much more than physically.

    Just depends on your personality type, am a mental person, some people are physical, so anything mental like fantasy would be a laff for them

    Cheers

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