Is It Normal to Have Taboo Fantasies?
- Lana
- Jun 23
- 5 min read
If you've ever closed a browser tab and felt a wave of shame, this is for you.
I’m Lana, an erotic identity coach. I work with men exploring desire, shame, submission,
fantasy, and identity.
The question I hear more than any other is surprisingly simple:
“Is something wrong with me?”
It usually comes up late. The house is quiet, you’re alone with your phone, and your mind goes somewhere it’s been going for years, somewhere you’d never say out loud. Afterward comes the question you’ve typed into a search bar more than once and deleted from your history every time.
The short answer is no — there’s almost certainly nothing wrong with you. And that’s not just me being kind. It’s what I see in this work every day, and it’s what the research shows.
What the research actually says
For all the cultural noise about what’s “deviant,” remarkably few sexual fantasies are actually unusual. A widely cited study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine surveyed 1,516 adults ranks 55 different sexual fantasies by how common each one was. The result: the overwhelming majority were common or typical. Themes involving submission, dominance, surrender, curiosity, and power exchange showed
up far more often than most people realize, and they were common for both men and
women.
So the important distinction isn’t whether a fantasy feels taboo. It’s whether it involves
consent, harm, distress, or compulsion. That’s the line that actually matters, and it’s a
completely different line from the one shame draws.
Read that again, because it’s the part shame keeps you from seeing: the fantasies people are most ashamed of are, more often than not, some of the most ordinary things about them.
“Taboo” and “harmful” are not the same thing
This is the distinction that dissolves most of the panic.A fantasy being taboo means the culture you grew up in told you not to talk about it. A fantasy being harmful means acting on it would hurt someone who didn’t agree to it. Most people were never taught the difference.
But almost everything men quietly torture themselves over — wanting to submit, wanting to be humiliated, curiosity about other men, being aroused by the idea of your partner with someone else, wearing something you’re “not supposed to” — none of it requires harming anyone. It lives entirely in the world of consenting adults and private imagination.
The shame attached to it is inherited, not earned.
Why the shame feels worse than the fantasy
Most men assume the fantasy is the problem. It almost never is. The problem is the shame stacked on top of it and the shame is usually the louder, more painful experience.
Here’s the mechanism: a desire shows up that you were taught is unacceptable. You can’t make it leave, so you conclude something must be broken in you. Now every time it surfaces, you get the arousal and a hit of self-judgment, and the two fuse together until you can’t feel one without the other. You start to believe the wanting itself is the flaw.
It isn’t. The shame isn’t a verdict on your desire. It’s a measure of how long you’ve needed permission for it and never been given any. And the moment a man stops fighting the desire and starts actually looking at it, the shame loses most of its grip and what’s underneath is usually the clearest, most honest thing he’s felt in years.
What taboo fantasies are usually trying to tell you
Fantasy is rarely random. It tends to point at something real.
The high-control man who fantasizes about surrender is often carrying more responsibility than he can put down anywhere in his waking life and the fantasy is the one place the weight comes off. The “perfect husband” drawn to humiliation may be exhausted by a lifetime of performing competence. Curiosity that doesn’t fit the identity you were handed isn’t a glitch; it’s information about who you actually are underneath the script.
You don’t have to act on any of it for it to be worth understanding. But the understanding is where you can find relief. The fantasy is a door, and what’s behind it is usually not depravity, it’s a part of you that never got permission to exist out loud.
Why do fantasies sometimes become more extreme?
Another fear many men carry is that their fantasies seem to “escalate” over time.
A fantasy that once felt exciting may start to feel familiar. New ideas appear. The things that once shocked you may not have the same charge they used to.
This can happen for all kinds of reasons: curiosity, novelty, changing life circumstances, growing more comfortable with your own desire, what you’re exposed to, or simply finally giving yourself permission to explore parts of you that were hidden for a long time.
Escalation doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong with you.
What matters is understanding why a fantasy is changing, not assuming the change itself is dangerous. (We’ll go deeper on this in a future article.)
“But mine feels different — worse than most"
Almost everyone believes their particular fantasy is the one exception, the line that’s
actually too far. That belief is itself one of the most common features of sexual shame. The specifics feel uniquely damning precisely because you’ve never been able to say them to anyone and hear, calmly, yes, that one too is more common than you think.
If you’re sitting with a specific version of this, you’re not alone in it:
• Is it normal for a straight man to think about other men?
• Why do I fantasize about my partner sleeping with someone else?
• Why am I aroused by humiliation or submission?
• Is wanting to wear feminine clothing a sign of something?
We’ll explore these questions in greater depth in future articles, but for now, know this: the fact that you’re asking these questions doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human.
When is a fantasy actually worth attention?
Honesty cuts both ways, so here’s the responsible part. A fantasy is worth paying real attention to in a few specific cases: when it centers on someone who can’t or won’t consent; when it causes you genuine, persistent distress rather than passing discomfort; or when it’s become compulsive enough that it’s crowding out the rest of your life.
Those situations call for a qualified professional, and that’s a good and normal thing to seek out. But notice what they have in common, they’re about harm and distress and compulsion, not about content being unusual. The simple fact that a desire is taboo is not, by itself, a reason for alarm. It never was.
You don’t have to carry it alone
The reason most men never resolve this is that they’ve never had a single safe place to say the thing out loud. Not with friends. Not with a partner. Often not even with a therapist. So it stays sealed, and the shame compounds in the dark for years.
That’s the entire reason this space exists — a confidential place to bring the desire you’ve never said to anyone, and have it met with clarity instead of judgment. To be ruined isn’t to be broken. It’s to finally stop hiding from yourself.
If you’re ready to understand what your desire has been trying to tell you, you can apply here.
Reference
Joyal, C. C., Cossette, A., & Lapierre, V. (2015). What Exactly Is an Unusual Sexual Fantasy?