About nothing? Not true. During intimacy, different thoughts arise. Some of them increase arousal, while others are quite the opposite. In bed, the mind does a lot of tricks on the body.
“Once I had a man at the reception who could achieve orgasm just by imagining the number 7,” says sexologist Claude Crepeau. “At the arousal stage, his brain counted: 1, 2, 3 … When it got to 7, ejaculation happened.”
Weird fantasy? “I have been researching the relationship between sexuality and imagination for over forty years. I can assure you that this number fetishism testifies to only one thing – the mystery of eros, which can take on thousands of guises, ”says the sexologist. And really, how much do we know about what happens in our minds at the moment when our bodies are intertwined in a passionate embrace?
“At this moment, I don’t think about anything!” is the first answer that comes to most of us. But it is the result of self-censorship.
Because in fact, “few people manage to be satisfied with reality and have a reality that can fully satisfy,” says Claude Crepeau. So most of us fantasize when we have sex. And experience forces us to admit that how much we like sexual action is largely determined by how much we enjoy the thoughts that accompany it.
Romantic, obscene, sublime… “Most of my patients don’t often share these thoughts, even with their partners,” says sexologist Irina Panyukova. – One of the reasons for such restraint is the lack of a cultural tradition and a generally accepted vocabulary for describing erotic experiences. We just don’t have enough words.” But this does not mean that the topic does not excite. How many there are those who have never wanted to ask a partner at the moment of hugs: “What are you thinking about now?” And thanks to research, we know the answer to this question.
Most women during sexual intercourse are focused on their body, more precisely, on what their partner thinks about their appearance, while men worry about their sexual viability, that is, about erection and penis size. This, of course, is interesting, but I would like to know the details.
Distracting thoughts
No one succeeds in avoiding thoughts, although they haunt different people to varying degrees. Even when we want intimacy, uninvited thoughts about debt, work, and shopping come from somewhere, distracting us and preventing us from focusing on the process. Does this prove that we are not really interested in what we do? “No,” says sexologist Alain Eril. “During lovemaking, we are included in a relationship with a partner, but at the same time in a relationship with ourselves, with our own idea of ourselves, our morality and everyday life … Therefore, it is quite natural that all this pops up in the form of thoughts.”
But if these worries absorb all our attention, then in the end they destroy the love game. What does it say? “About trouble,” Alain Eril replies, “which means it’s time to ask the question: what is wrong with me? Am I just “doing my marital duty”? Am I thinking about other relationships?
Distracting thoughts play the role of a counterbalance that allows you to reduce the ardor
Sometimes a feeling of guilt or anxiety interferes with fully surrendering to sex. For example, patients who are very eager to conceive sometimes report to me that their desire has become utilitarian and occurs only on those days and hours when conception is possible. It’s terrible, they say in desperation. They can be understood: it seems that there is no place for feelings here at all.
Yet distracting thoughts do more than just get in the way. Sometimes they come in handy.
For example, “anti-erotic” thoughts are a well-known means to slow down arousal. Many men admit to being distracted in this way to delay climax. “And they are doing the right thing,” continues Alain Eril. – A key element of sexuality is the balance between control and its absence. And distracting thoughts play the role of a counterbalance that allows you to reduce the ardor. With these thoughts, we return to a calm state – before ascending to new heights.
Changeable fantasies
There is a difference in how we use our imagination when a relationship is just starting and when it has been going on for twenty years. Sexologists note: while the couple is experiencing a love union, there is no need for fantasies. Their time comes when the relationship begins to fade. At the same time, we do not fantasize about the same thing from the beginning to the end of sexual intercourse: during the arousal phase, our fantasies are varied and can change, but as we approach the climax, we get closer to our true essence.
“In the pre-orgasm phase, mind control is weakened and the prohibitions created by culture and upbringing are removed,” explains Claude Crepeau, “and then more stereotypical fantasies arise that are closer to our primary fantasy.” What does “primary” mean? “Each of us has our own “synthetic” fantasy, which consists of the first childhood and youthful erotic impressions, as well as unconscious psycho-emotional needs,” the sexologist clarifies. “Its storyline is always the same, even though we put it in different contexts.” It turns out that every soul has its own erotic unconscious…
“The variety of ways of eroticization does not prevent us from bringing fantasy to some common denominator in both men and women,” notes Claude Crepeau.
However, some of the plots that we imagine during intercourse are such that it is difficult to admit even to ourselves, so we prefer to suppress them. “Sadism, masochism… The universe of our fantasies often goes far beyond our actual sexual behavior,” continues Claude Crepeau. And it’s not always easy to accept.
Women often fantasize about submitting to multiple men, but when a woman imagines this while making love to her husband, she is unlikely to admit it even to herself. The same is true for men: the fantasy of dominating one or more women may conflict with their notions of gender equality.” When the inhibitions are too strong, we force many desires out of consciousness. Or rather, we transform them into a scenario of the same nature, but with a softer sexual content, more acceptable to our “I” …
Attraction mechanisms
“We now know that many factors are involved in sexual arousal,” says Serge Stoleru, a psychotherapist who studies sexual desire. “They activate the work of certain parts of the brain (at the moment when the bodies approach each other), and these zones do not depend on the gender and sexual orientation of a person.”
Vision noted someone’s good looks? The orbital-frontal area of the cerebral cortex is activated. The heart is beating like crazy – it turned on the amygdala. The hypothalamus then picks up the baton to speed up the pulse, before the testosterone surge in men ends. (Estrogen levels do not rise in women, suggesting that biological factors affect women less than men in sexual relationships.)
Brain tomograms show that when exposed to erotic stimuli, certain areas of the brain are excited, while others are gradually deactivated, as if we were releasing the handbrake of our inhibiting impulses. “These are the zones of the temporal and frontal lobes that block arousal,” explains the psychotherapist. – Their activity is reduced, for example, with hypersexuality. And if these zones work constantly, sexual desire is greatly reduced or disappears altogether. Should this be considered proof of the existence of an internal censorship, which Freud called the “Superego”? May be. But Serge Stoleru sees this as more of a reason to test new hypotheses.
Lies of fantasy
To come to terms with your obscene or sadistic fantasies, you need to be very confident in yourself. It is such a subtle experience that it sometimes takes several years of psychotherapy to try to say something about it.
The fantasies that patients of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts most often confess to are in fact only masks under which other fantasies are hidden, causing a much stronger sense of guilt. It turns out that it is impossible to get to the origins of what drives us? Unless you have to resort to special work.
“I remember a patient who could only get pleasure from imagining how she was humiliated by an older man. She felt like a prisoner of this fantasy, says Claude Crepeau. – Analyzing the history of her fantasy during psychoanalysis, she remembered that in adolescence she became a victim of violence and, in order to cope with this trauma, she later eroticized her in a distorted form, replacing the rapist with another man. Her enjoyment became a kind of transformation of defeat into victory. When she realized this, the fantasy lost its power and the woman was able to free herself from it.
Disclosure should be only partial, and most importantly, let it remain secret.
And yet someone allows himself to express his feelings and desires frankly and freely. If you read the erotic letters that the writer James Joyce wrote to his future wife Nora, or the messages of Mozart in which he described playing with the excrement of his girlfriend, it becomes clear that some people have an internal censor not so strict that it was impossible to negotiate with him. So why are others forced to struggle with what emerges from the depths of their unconscious?
“Many do not have confidence that, having fully accepted and understood this message, they will be able to control it,” explains Irina Panyukova, “hence the fear of becoming a victim of their own fantasies.”
Then the question arises: is it worth asking a partner to tell him what imaginary pictures excite him?
“It may be useful to slightly open the world of your fantasies to each other in order to avoid banality in sexual relations with a regular partner,” admits Irina Panyukova. “But disclosure should be only partial, and most importantly, let it remain secret.” Because, although we know that the sexual relationship of a couple eventually becomes a fantasy group sex (when everyone plays their own “movie”), nevertheless, our erotic fantasies are our personal living space, which is useful to protect.