We’ve all heard it before: Our brains are our most powerful sexual organs.
But what goes on inside those well-used organs is largely down to gender.
According to new research, while both men and women will have «intimate and romantic» fantasies about their partners, they go about their lusty imaginings in very different ways.
While men tend to fantasise about «exploratory» sex, women migrate towards «pleasant» encounters, say a team of scientists from the University of Granada.
But many respondents, regardless of gender, had fantasised about «negative» sexual experiences, too. The new study of Spanish 18 to 73 year olds has lifted the lid on our wildest sexual dreams, with a vast 80 per cent of respondents admitting to fantasising about «unpleasant» scenarios.
Almost 100 per cent of the 2,250 respondents said they had imagined «pleasant» encounters.
Exploratory encounters – more frequently indulged in by men – include group sex, swinging parties, promiscuity and orgies.
And definitions of «unpleasant» and «pleasant» shifted. For men, the most common «unpleasant» fantasy was a homosexual encounter, for women one of the most common was «being forced to have sex.»
Women fantasised about being submissive on average just once in a lifetime, but men had negative sexual fantasies «sometimes» or «once a year.»
The respondents, who had all been in heterosexual relationships for at least six months, confirmed the long-held belief that men think about sex more than women.
More research is needed into attitudes towards the encounters, but it’s no secret that, as the researchers put it, sexual fantasy «favors some aspects as sexual desire and arousal».
In fact, as Dr. Logan Levkoff told the Huffington Post: «We are supposed to have an active fantasy life. Sexual fantasies do not make us sluts. Nor do they suggest that we have trouble in our current relationship. Fantasies make us healthy sexual beings.»
