Acting Out

Please note: This post discusses my personal sex life, and my personal sexual fantasies, in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don’t want to read about that stuff: Now would be a good time to disembark.

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Ultimate_guide_to_sexual_fantasy
Sex advice writers — including me — are always telling people to spice up their sex lives by trying to act out their fantasies.

And when they do, these sex advice writers — again, including me — generally warn people of some issues and pitfalls that can come with trying to act out fantasies. Like: Your partner may freak out when they hear what you have in mind. Your partner may try it, but not really like it and not want to try again. Your partner may like it more than you imagined, and want to go further with it than you want. You may like it more than you imagined, and want to go farther with it than you’d thought you would. (How many people have “tried out the fantasy” of same-sex sex, and had the results of their “experiment” turn out to be, “Okay, I guess I’m gay”?)

But there’s one potential fantasy-acting pitfall that doesn’t get talked about as much, so I want to talk about it now:

It may be disappointing.

Even if your partner is totally game and everything goes according to plan — it may be disappointing.

Savage_love
I was thinking about this because of a recent letter to Savage Love. (Good old Savage Love; always good for inspiration.) A 42-year-old gay man was acting out his superhero bondage fantasies for the first time. And I quote, since the letter-writer says it better than I could:

“The first time I did it, it was incredibly hot, but since then, it’s felt like something’s missing. Even when they’re sexy and friendly, it just feels lacking somehow. At times, I even feel a bit ridiculous.”

Mr. Savage’s advice was good, as it often is. But in this case, I think it was also — not dismissive exactly, but incomplete. He basically said a) if acting out your fantasy is making you unhappy, don’t do it, and b) relax and try not to be too self-conscious, since that’ll ruin any kind of sex, fantasy-acting or no.

All of which is excellent advice.

But I think Mr. Savage was overlooking an important possibility. Sometimes acting out a fantasy is just disappointing. And not just because you’re being uptight or self-conscious, or your partner isn’t as into it as you are, or any of the other standard pitfalls.

Sometimes it’s disappointing because fantasy and reality are not the same thing.

Acting out a fantasy is not the same experience as having a fantasy. It can’t be.

Three_kinds_of_asking_for_it
In a fantasy, everything is perfect. Everything goes exactly the way you want it; everything happens at the exact right moment. You always get fucked exactly when and how you want; get your pants taken off with the exact right kind of eagerness or sensuality; get your nipples licked with the exact right pressure, at exactly the right moment.

Naughty_spanking_stories
Even in dominant-submissive fantasies. No, make that especially in dominant-submissive fantasies. You always get spanked exactly as hard as you want; get the cock or the dildo shoved into your ass with the exact right amount of roughness; get forced to do the things that you most desperately want to be forced to do.

Example: I have frequent, intense fantasies of being made to do things I don’t want to do. I have fantasies of being spanked or beaten harder than I really like; being forced to submit to more pain than is pleasurable, and then some; being made to do things I find shameful and degrading. In short, being made to suffer.

But of course, the reality of that kind of play is radically different from the fantasy. In the fantasy, the resistance and suffering and submission all go down like sweet butter. In reality, it’s a struggle. In reality, being hit harder than I really like… it’s hard. It hurts, and it’s hard.

It’s not that it’s not worth it. It totally is. But it’s a very different sort of pleasure than it is in my fantasies.

George_clooney
And I think the difference between fantasy and reality is double especially true if you have fantasies of being some other person: being George Clooney or Catherine the Great, Superman or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When it’s just you, alone in your head with nothing but your right hand or the sex toy of your choice to keep you company, it’s much easier to disappear into your character. When you’re actually acting it out in real life, then unless you’re a very skilled actor indeed, it’s a whole lot harder to lose yourself, to just be Superman or Catherine the Great, to forget that the real you is still there in the room acting out this role.

Superman
And I’m guessing that’s what happened with Mr. Superheroes In Bondage. The fact that his first time was a home run and the times after that were strikeouts… that makes me think it even more. I’m guessing that the first time, he was overcome with that sweet, wonderful, “I’m finally doing this! I’ve wanted so badly to do this, for years, and now at last I really am!” excitement.

But that doesn’t last. It can’t last. And when it fades, you’re left with the reality of acting out your fantasy, and how that does or doesn’t work for you in the long run.

Renaissance_faire
Now, of course that’s not to say you shouldn’t try. Acting out a fantasy and having a fantasy aren’t the same — but that’s not to say that one is better than the other. Sometimes acting out a fantasy will be disappointing; sometimes it will exceed your wildest hopes and expectations; sometimes it will take you off in a completely different, unexpected direction. And sometimes it will just be different. Not better, not worse, simply a different kind of pleasure entirely.

And you need to be prepared for that. When you’re acting out a fantasy — for the first time, but also for the second or third or fifth — you need to be prepared for the possibility, indeed the likelihood, that the “acting-out” part of “acting out your fantasy” is going to be very different from the “fantasy” part.

And you need to be okay with that.

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Acting Out
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4 thoughts on “Acting Out

  1. 1

    Sounds like another case for the “hydraulic shadow metaphor”. 😉 Doing it once released the libido-portion that was bound into the fantasy. Apparently, his basic “need” for the fantasy was shallower than he’d thought.

  2. 2

    This sounds exactly like what I once told a former b/f…we were discussing my rape fantasies and I told him that I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to have that fantasy acted out, for the exact reason that, in the acting out, I wouldn’t have control over the situation anymore.
    I did eventually get together with a sexually dominant guy with whom I got to have the experiences of being spanked too hard and “made” to do things I didn’t entirely want to do. And yeah, it is worth it, but it is also hard. I think it’s great that you acknowledge that.

  3. 3

    Spot on, as always, Greta! The question I had to work out was, “what part didn’t quite work? Why? What can I tweak to make it better next time? What did I need to tell my partner that I didn’t tell him/her? Is it a big enough deal to even bother with again?”
    For me, it was often a big enough deal to keep working the fantasy play until it WAS as smooth and delicious as I had always hoped. Some things I did drop after the first time-it wasn’t at hot as I thought it’d be. But if the spark was still in there, I found it worth the effort to “practice” more until my partner and I got it right most, or all, of the time. Anal sex was like that. Not super hot the first time, but worth the work to get better at it.
    So, a fantasy can be a disappointment, certainly, but it doesn’t always mean you should drop it.
    Keep up the great work!

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