Here’s how Tieme of Sexual Awakening of a 30-something Wife answers one of Jay of JayLovesKitti’s five questions:

Q. 5- How would you feel and react if a male friend (that you find f*able) mentioned reading your blog?

A. ... If the male friend didn’t realize that it was my blog, I would do my best to change the subject quickly before my embarrassment gave me away. I’m pale and I blush easily! If he had already guessed that I might be the author, well, I don’t know how I would be able to look him in the eye. I’ve written some pretty personal stuff in my blog, and it would be hard not to obsess about the guy knowing about how I love to be tied up, spread open, spanked, and penetrated. For most male readers, if you knew the secret fantasies of a female friend, would you ever be able to look at her the same?

My first reaction is yes, of course I could look at a female friend the same if I knew here secret fantasies. My second is no, I wouldn’t think of her the same way. My third is of course I could look at friends the same way if I knew their secret fantasies.

Here’s the progression.

Yes: Everybody seems to have fantasies. Not all of them are, well, practical. Take the common non-sexual fantasy many men have of someday buying a sailboat. Would very many, if any, really sail it around the world if they had the chance? No, probably not. For almost everyone the boat fantasy provides a symbol or ideal or sort of Dumbo’s feather that helps them get through hard parts of the day, of life, of relationships. Same with sexual fantasies — at least the kind most people would be a bit embarrassed to disclose. Anyway, to get back to the point, since almost everyone has fantasies — often fantasies that conflict or contradict their public personas — I can still look at someone the same way if I know theirs.

No. Again choosing a non-sexual metaphor here, when a buttoned-down workaholic co-worker revealed that she dreams about moving to the coast and opening a pottery shop I thought differently of her because I knew something important and personal about her. Similarly, when a former partner told me a previous lover had often spanked her and that she’d missed that in subsequent relationships it changed the way I looked at her because I understood her much better. If I’d known when we were together our relationship might have proceeded differently even if, at the time anyway, I doubt I’d have wanted to spank her anyway. So no, knowing someone’s deepest fantasies makes it impossible to look at them the same way.

Yes. Just because you inadvertently learn something as personal about someone as their most powerful sexual fantasies doesn’t mean your basic relationship is all that different. Or, more correctly, knowing how they feel doesn’t need to change anything nor should it. Case in point: if I’m attracted to someone to begin with, knowing her fantasies won’t really change the way I feel about her any more than seeing her naked in a sauna would. So yes, I could still look her in the eye. Similarly if I wasn’t attracted to them it wouldn’t change the way I looked at them any more than hearing them making love with their partner in an adjacent room would.

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Finally, while knowing someone’s fantasies wouldn’t really change the way I looked at them, knowing they wanted to act on them (particularly if it was a fantasy that resonated with mine, particularly if I learned I was an object of their fantasy) would be something else entirely. I’m not sure it would change my public behavior towards them or towards anyone else but it certainly might alter my own fantasy landscape.

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Hmm. Let me revise that, or at least introduce a special case. In mathematics and mathematical logic there are often special cases for the first couple of numbers: zero, one, and sometimes two. In terms of disclosed fantasies it’s different if the disclosure comes from your current partner. Now that can sometimes change everything, at least if you’re willing to hear it out before trying to respond.

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This last bit about knowing a partner’s fantasies, and the one before about knowing someone wants to act on theirs, brings up a fairly tricky problem — that of fulfilling fantasy.

Let’s go back to the neutral sailboat fantasy. What would happen if you could play magic genie and plop a sailboat, free and clear, fully stocked, and ready to go with all his other obligations magically and tidily resolved as well. Think he’d just leap onboard and go? If so how far do you think he’d make it before this or that or the other thing brought him back? And if (when) he does come back what will he be able to fantasize about instead?

The point is that most fantasies are best left unfulfilled, and not because they’re impractical, contrary to one’s true nature or (as many sexual fantasies are) dangerous or cumbersome (real-life zippers always stick.) Instead think about the pitiful woman in Bridges of Madison County who, her children discover after she’s died, had a very brief fling with a bridge inspector (a bridge inspector?) and spent the rest of her life going through the motions with a husband and family she could never feel complete about. Fulfilling that fantasy (a fairly common one judging from sales figures and commentary) did nothing to enhance her quality of life and instead arguably diminished it radically. Same with every poor middle-aged bozo who tries to lose himself with a Corvette or a much younger woman.

The facile response to fulfillment tends to be “act in haste, repent at leisure.” A more correct one, though very hard to ultimately understand, would be “before enlightenment chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment chop wood, carry water.” That’s not to say one should never act on one’s fantasies — not at all. But before one makes that choice it’s best to consider what it really means and whether, adrenaline and longing aside, you’ll feel more or less complete for doing so.

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A couple of further points:

- I’ve gotten a lot more turned on just sitting next to someone I had a crush on than I did later when I overheard her detail a fairly extravagant sexual experiences to a confidant.

- I must have masturbated eleven or twelve times in the first forty eight hours after an old acquaintance told me that as a teenager she’d regularly fantasized about me tying her up. I have no idea why she picked me for that fantasy, which I think was the biggest part of the thrill. Our various flames had died out by the time she told me — she was no longer my type nor I at all hers — but woozie! The “might have beens” were something else.

- One long-term partner would always cryptically answer “underwear” whenever I asked her what she’d been thinking about after a sessionw here she seemed particularly aroused. She rarely wore anything more than jeans, t-shirts, and shoes, and when she wore underpants at all it tended to be extraordinarily plain and practical.

- I’m usually at a loss when asked about my own fantasies. They tend to be eclectic, situation specific, and (a meta-fantasy?) collaborative.