When it comes to fantasising about sex, men have more vivid and weird fantasies than women and want them to come true in real life, reveals a research.
It also tells us that a significant proportion of women evoke fantasies associated with submission (being tied up, spanked, forced to have sex) but they do not want these to be realised in actual life.
Importantly, unlike men, women in general clearly distinguish between fantasy and desire.
"Our main objective was to specify norms in sexual fantasies - an essential step in defining pathologies. As we suspected, there are a lot more common fantasies than atypical fantasies," said lead researcher Christian Joyal from Institut universitaire en sante mentale de Montreal, University of Montreal.
Pathological sexual fantasies involve non-consenting partners, they induce pain or they are absolutely necessary in deriving satisfaction.
For the study, researchers analysed a sample of adults willing to describe their sexual fantasies.
As a result, 1,517 adults (799 men and 718 women) responded to a questionnaire describing their sexual fantasies, as well as describing their favourite fantasy in detail.
Many women who express more extreme fantasies of submission (domination by a stranger) specify that they never want these fantasies to come true.
"The majority of men, however, would love their weird sexual fantasies to come true," they found.
"As expected, the presence of one's significant other is considerably stronger in female fantasies than in male fantasies. In general, men fantasize much more about extramarital relationships compared to women," researchers concluded.
Overall, these findings allow us to shed light on certain social phenomena such as the popularity of the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" with women, Joyal noted.
The findings appeared in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
