Make friends with your fantasies.  Don’t vainly attempt to control them, and maybe they won’t take control of you. Then you can use them as safe outlets for dark, naughty or forbidden desires that you can’t, or wouldn’t, want to live out–perhaps because you know that doing so would hurt you or someone you love.  For some people, fantasies are great mental sex toys, interactive mind-movies, playgrounds for the libido.  We grow up playing as children, but gradually all our games become serious and there’s very little playtime left in our adult lives.  The erotic theater of the mind is a place for you to play.  Do try to play safe, though that’s not always as simple as it sounds.

What about sharing?  Opening up about otherwise secret sexual fantasies with your partner can make lovemaking more exciting.  Sharing fantasies isn’t usually necessary when you first have sex together.  So much is new in reality, your mind doesn’t have to go much farther than the present moment for stimulation.  But after a while, when you’re in a long-term relationship, you get to know each other’s bodies so well that your mind is bound to drift…into fantasy. After all, there are only so many physical positions into which you can bend your bodies, but there is an endless array of mind-games you can play, or role-play.  On the other hand, your secret sexual fantasy could hurt, anger, scare or disgust your lover.  One person’s fantasy is another’s nightmare.

So, to share or not to share?  It really depends on you, your partner and the fantasy.  In other words: proceed with caution.  Take baby steps…

If you’ve never shared a fantasy with your lover, and you’d like to try, start by sharing a memory, a thrilling erotic experience you actually had together.  Reminisce about it in bed, then embellish the memory by imagining something that could have made the experience even more exciting. You can also stimulate the sharing of fantasies by reading or looking at erotica together. Be poetic, be explicit, be romantic, be outrageous, be honest, but be sensitive.  Try tossing out small parts of your secret fantasies like test balloons; if it floats, keep embellishing; if you can see it sinking by your partner’s negative reaction, switch gears.

It’s risky business, but nothing great in life comes without taking a chance.  If you can share your fantasies with your lover, you can get to know each other deeply, weaving powerful strands of feeling into the fabric of your relationship, blending fantasies with memories and ever-expanding possibilities.