Dear Suzie, Hey I’m 19, female, in a loving heterosexual reslationship, but I keep having homosexual thoughts and fantasies. I regularly dream about other women, but I don’t know if this means I’m bisexual or not. I can’t imagine ever being with a woman in real life, but I’m still confused. Is this normal?
It’s entirely normal to have homosexual fantasies and thoughts, even when you are 100% straight. Fantasies are not about real life – they are a way of trying out certain things and trying on certain personas, especially ones that seem taboo.
In fantasies, we often dabble with things we expressly wouldn’t like to genuinely experience. Other common fantasies are of rape, of sex with strangers, of public exposure – events that would horrify and even traumatise us in the real world. The point is that in fantasies we are actually in control of exactly what happens, and that gives us the safety to imagine things that would in reality be quite out of our hands. It’s the frisson of danger, powerlessness and disgust that gives us a sexual thrill, mainly because it’s so in our hands while being in our dreams.
So – rest assured that what you are experiencing is normal and natural and very common and has no reflection on what you’d actually wish to do. If you want to read more about this, have a look at the books page on this site – I have written about sexual fantasies in Pandora’s Book of Sexual Fantasies and you may find that helpful.