New Study Challenges Myths About Fantasizing During Relationships
Sexual fantasies often change depending on whether a person is alone or with a partner, and this difference does not automatically signal trouble in a relationship. A new peer-reviewed study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior finds that context strongly shapes both the content and emotional tone of erotic thoughts.
The research shows that during partnered sex, people are more likely to imagine emotionally intimate scenarios and think about their current partner. In contrast, fantasies during solitary masturbation tend to be more explicitly erotic and more likely to feature someone outside the relationship.
How Researchers Studied Fantasies
The study was led by Aki Gormezano of the University of Northern British Columbia and Sari van Anders of Queen’s University, both specialists in sexuality and gender. Their team wanted to understand how sexual imagination changes across situations and how this links to desire and satisfaction.
They focused on two key themes in fantasies: eroticism, meaning physical arousal and pleasure, and nurturance, meaning emotional closeness, care, and affection. The researchers also examined the “fantasy target” to see whether people fantasized about their partner, someone else, or a mix of both.
The team recruited 546 adults in the United States and Canada through online platforms and social media. Participants had been in a committed sexual relationship for at least six months, ensuring a basic level of stability and familiarity with their partners.
The sample was deliberately diverse and roughly balanced between sexual or gender minorities and people from majority groups. This design aimed to capture a broad range of experiences and relationship structures, including monogamous and non-monogamous arrangements.
What People Fantasize About And When
Participants were asked to recall and describe two recent sexual fantasies: one that occurred during solitary masturbation and one that occurred during sex with their committed partner. They wrote who they were thinking about and what happened in their imagination in each scenario.
They also completed a 50-item checklist created for the study, rating how strongly different elements appeared in each fantasy, such as specific sexual acts, emotional warmth, or feelings of being cared for. Additional questionnaires measured relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and levels of sexual desire.
Two independent coders classified each fantasy into three groups based on its target: focused only on the partner, focused on someone other than the partner, or involving both the partner and other individuals. This allowed the team to compare patterns across contexts.
During solitary masturbation, 56 percent of fantasies centered on someone outside the relationship, while 26 percent focused only on the partner. The remaining fantasies combined partner and non-partner figures. This pattern shifted noticeably when people were having sex with their partner.
In the partnered context, about 35 percent of participants fantasized solely about their partner, while roughly 38 percent thought about someone else. A substantial portion reported “both-fantasies” that blended their partner with additional people, especially among those in relationships with multiple partners.
Nurturance, Eroticism And Satisfaction
Across the sample, fantasies during partnered sex were more likely to include nurturant elements, such as tenderness, emotional connection, and a sense of being loved. These themes appeared more strongly than in fantasies during solitary masturbation, which were generally more explicitly erotic.
The researchers noted that sexual fantasies are often assumed to be mainly about graphic sexual content, especially for men. Instead, they found that many people’s fantasies during sex with a partner brought together arousal and emotional intimacy, underscoring that fantasy can reflect both desire and connection.
When the team looked at links with sexual desire, they found that a strong desire for one’s partner was associated with highly erotic and highly nurturant fantasies about that partner. In other words, people who strongly wanted their partner tended to imagine them in ways that combined intense arousal with closeness and care.
By contrast, stronger desire for attractive strangers tended to accompany fantasies centered on people outside the relationship. These external targets were more common in solitary contexts, where emotional intimacy was usually less prominent in the imagined scenarios.
Sexual satisfaction also appeared to shape fantasy patterns. Participants who reported higher levels of sexual satisfaction were about 63 percent more likely to fantasize about their partner and 90 percent less likely to fantasize about someone outside the relationship compared with less satisfied participants.
Does Fantasizing About Others Spell Trouble?
Despite cultural worries, the study did not find a direct and simple connection between fantasizing about someone else and being unhappy in a relationship. Overall relationship satisfaction was not clearly tied to whom people fantasized about during sex or masturbation.
The links were more nuanced for sexual satisfaction and types of desire, suggesting that context and personal meaning matter more than the mere presence of non-partner fantasies. The authors emphasize that many participants fantasized about people other than their partner, even during partnered sex, without clear evidence of harm.
For many individuals and couples, these results may help normalize fantasy as a flexible psychological space rather than a strict indicator of loyalty or commitment. The findings support the idea that sexual imagination does not always match a person’s real-world choices or attachment to a partner.
People in monogamous relationships tended to report much more nurturance in fantasies during partnered sex than during solitary masturbation. Those in consensually non-monogamous or multi-partner relationships were somewhat more likely to report both-fantasies that included partners and others together.
Across all relationship structures, however, the broad pattern held: partnered contexts encouraged more emotionally rich fantasies, while solitary contexts skewed toward explicit eroticism and a wider cast of imagined characters.
Limits Of The Study And Future Work
The authors note that the research has important limitations. Participants described their most recent fantasies in each context from memory, rather than reporting in real time, so some details and timing could have been blurred or selectively recalled.
Because the design was cross-sectional, measuring all variables at one point in time, the study cannot determine cause and effect. It remains unclear whether high sexual satisfaction leads people to fantasize more about their partners, or whether partner-focused fantasies help support satisfaction.
The results also capture general trends, not rules that apply to every person or relationship. The researchers stress that sexual fantasies vary widely in content, intensity, and emotional tone, and that differences from the average pattern do not automatically signal problems.
Future work may use methods such as daily diary studies or app-based prompts to track fantasies closer to the moment they occur. Such approaches could reveal how fantasies fluctuate over days or weeks and how they respond to relationship events, stress, or changes in wellbeing.
The study is part of a broader effort to understand sexuality as dynamic and context-dependent rather than fixed. According to the authors, people may experience different sets of desires across fantasy, masturbation, partnered sex, pornography use, and varying relationship situations.
By highlighting the fluid nature of sexual imagination, the research invites individuals and clinicians to see fantasies as one piece of a complex picture. For many, the presence of non-partner fantasies during sex may be a normal part of human sexuality, not an automatic sign that something is wrong.
Article prepared by Victoria Caldwell.
