Thinking of someone else in bed – yes or no?

Image by the brilliant Stuart F Taylor

A friend of mine recently quizzed me on what I think about while shagging. Or, more specifically, who.

I’m drawing a blank, I’m afraid. I mean, it’s not like I go unconscious as soon as I get my kit off, but in terms of mental energy I don’t think I have more than is required to focus on what’s happening at any given moment. I’m not saying this to boast about how amazingly focused I am on sex – I don’t think ‘thinking about a celebrity arse’ is some sort of crime, for which you get a tick in the ‘bad sex’ column. I just don’t happen to do it.

Other people do though, apparently, at least according to my friend who – while humping a guy she didn’t really get that excited by – has lived a full and rich mental life in which she’s performed sex acts on most of her favourite TV stars and a few of mine to boot.

I’m curious, because I am curious about most Sex Things – is it fairly common for people to think about others when they’re shagging? Like watching porn while you wank to help you reach a climax? I’ve no problem fantasising per se – in fact there are so many characters in my wank dreams that I might have to start an imaginary union so they can fight for equal screen time – but when I’m fucking I’m just fucking.

I don’t buy the argument that people who let their minds wander are horrible bastards, either. As far as I know, none of my partners have been imagining Cameron Diaz’s face superimposed over mine (apart from anything else I imagine the incongruity would be deeply offputting) but I suspect none of them would tell me if they had because, after all, I am prone to being irrationally jealous if I’m in the wrong mood.

I just think… argh. I just think maybe when I’m having a proper shag there’s a part of my brain that shuts down – the part which plagues me with panic and stress for the rest of the waking day. The anxious part I usually hate takes a rest and steps back to let sensation through.

Things I don’t think while fucking

– Imagine if my partner was [insert name of hot celebrity]

– Imagine if [insert name of hot celebrity] were here in the room, masturbating frantically in the corner and occasionally shouting ‘bravo!’

– We should paint the ceiling.

– This guy’s cock is larger/smaller/straighter/curvier than this other guy’s cock.

– I should call my Mum.

Things I think while fucking

– Ooh, that’s nice.

– Harder.

– Yeah, like that.

– Harder still.

– Mmm.

– Ouch.

– Mmm.

– More lube.

– Harder.

Occasionally, if my mind is particularly active, I wonder what my tits look like from below.

Thinking of someone else in bed – do you do it?

So this isn’t one of those blog posts where I have a massive rant, or tell you a hot story about this one time I fucked a guy while fantasising about Sid Vicious. It’s curiosity, I guess. I’d quite like to have the mental energy to conjure a scene during sex.

Mainly I wonder what would come to mind. When I’m cracking a quick one off just to relieve tension, I tend to leap straight for one of my easier, go-to fantasies. I’m wondering if, during sex, the people in my head would do the things I was doing in bed. If, instead of beatings and pounding and the kind of fuck that in real life would leave me raw, the people in my mind would do what the guy I’m with is doing. If they’d bite my nipples at the same time as he does. If the fantasy would match the sensation, just with a different face.

I suspect it’d be the other way round. If I had the capacity to fantasise while I was in the middle of a fuck, it’d look more like a window about thirty seconds into the future. I imagine him – the guy I’m fucking – but he’s fucking me just that bit harder. He’s moved his hands and is no longer gripping my tits, but he’s got them firmly on my hips, angling my arse up for better entry as he slams his cock home.

And as I get closer to orgasm in real life, and want to push myself over the edge, the version of him in my fantasy is halfway there already – pulling his cock out and coming on my tits.

Or my arse.

Or…

Fuck it, if it’s in my head then surely it can be both. Clones and clones of this guy – in me, on me, and all over me.

24 Comments

  • Lizzie says:

    Another excellent post GOTN! I continually feel guilty about this… I am bisexual, and 6 months ago ended an affair with a hot and adventurous married man because of the guilt of cheating on my amazing, but unadventurous, long term girlfriend (and the impact on his wife). Since then I have frequently replayed sex scenes in my head, both whilst having fun on my own, and during sex with my girlfriend. Most frequently I imagine him watching us and then coming all over my face, which pushes me over the edge to orgasm. I still feel guilty that I’m not only fantasising about my current partner, but she is pretty straight-laced and frowns on many things that drive me crazy with desire… My view is better have these scenes in my head than in real life…

  • LOL!!! And agreeing with all of your “things I like” . . . perhaps occasionally to add “slow down a bit” OR “faster, faster!” . . . and sometimes, “would you like to turn me over!”
    BUT . . . yes, once in the moment, for the moment, I’m usually only thinking “of the moment”.
    I say “once in the moment”, because occasionally with some new partners I may find myself thinking “this is not working for me, I am going to have to ask to stop”. But that’s not very often!!!
    Xxx – K

  • Emma Walker says:

    It’s actually a thing! It’s called the reptilian brain, a state of the mind when the body is experiencing extreme circumstances of the basic functions. Eg, starvation, a desperate need to wee/shit and having sex. The rest of your brain kinda turns off.

    • yaya says:

      Ow thank god, it’s a thing! My brain totally shuts down when he puts his dick inside me (or earlier). He finds that particularly funny when I’m halfway a sentence (he doesn’t do it om purpose ;-)). I don’t even think in language anymore, it’s more like extreme focus on body parts

  • Belle says:

    I think I only ever fantasised about someone else when I was bored with my then partner or the sex we were having just wasn’t hitting the right spots (regardless of how much either of us tried). You know the sex you have when you probably should have broken up about a month ago. :-/

    Otherwise, the other list is more accurate for me in general.

  • Azkyroth says:

    I don’t usually fantasize about other people, but I have some scenes from fantasies/scenes/stories I like to write that I focus on during partner sex, particularly when I want to keep fucking and come properly but my cardio is being a brat. >.>

    • Stephanie says:

      Yep, me, too. In my case, it’s my asthma or cerebral palsy.

      “Oh, fuck – sex injury!” Said with a kind of laugh.

      • Desire on wheels says:

        Speaking of “oh fuck – sex injury”, I know someone who’s found a great response to, “You’re in a wheelchair! What happened to you?” She says, “Sex injury. Totally worth it, though.”

  • Silly kinkster says:

    I do when I’m having vanilla sex, not when I’m having kinky sex. Or rather, when I’m having vanilla sex, I often fantasise about highly kinky sex with an utter Dom who looks a little like a cross between Tom Hiddleston and James Marsters.

    It made me feel kinda guilty, tbh, like I was refusing my partner a level of intimacy, being unfaithful to what we were sharing. That said, I don’t really have much in the way of vanilla sex any more as anyway, so not really a problem.

  • Lisa says:

    When I was with my ex, I thought about (and also had wet dreams about…!) my ex ex/1st love. Now back with my 1st love and I think about most of the things you do….plus ohhhh… ohhhh… ohhhh… my fucking Goddess YES…. *Dies*! I no longer have any need to think about anyone else….

  • Arnie says:

    I’m in the second category – I’m generally too caught up in what I’m doing to fantasize about something.

    So “unngh”, and “harder” etc is pretty much as far as I go ;)

  • mouse says:

    Oh my! I honestly thought everybody did this and it was one of those unspoken ‘givens’ like sex is squelchy or occasionally you catch someone with your elbow etc?? I don’t do it all the time, but certainly every solo time (sometimes saying it out loud pushes me over) and the sex doesn’t happen to be vanilla, my mind just runs and runs… I’m really astonished at how ‘in the moment’ you describe you can be, but most of all I’m intrigued to try it!!

  • David B says:

    Fantasising about another person during sex is for me like going to see a great band perform live but then zoning them out and singing another song inside my head. Sex for me is all about being in the present moment – it’s about getting OUT of my head, and having all of my senses engaged and properly enjoying the experience.

  • Not My Real Name says:

    I’m like you GOTN, I don’t seem to have the bandwidth to fantasise about sex whilst I’m fucking. I am thinking, but it’s about what I’m doing: Is it working for her? Should I be slower/harder/changing direction? Is my tongue/hand aching? Has she come? That moan, was that a good moan? Am I using my teeth too much? I’m not saying I’m thinking all this in full sentences in my head, but I am consciously making decisions throughout. Which is, now I come to write it down for a total stranger, a bit weird. What she’s thinking about, I literally have no fucking idea.

  • Claire says:

    Having another person with us in a threesome is an occasional fantasy for Mistress and I, and one we both enjoy. Its regular enough to be entertaining, infrequent enough that its not a problem, and generally pretty damn hot. Oddly enough its my sub-side that gets the attention, rather than mistress herself.

    Sometimes its a fairly nondescript “bloke” whose is inappropriately well endowed, sometimes a georgeous t-girl, and occasionally a celebrity – Mistress seems to have a thing for pretty boys like Orlando Bloom :-)

    That said, fantasy is as far as it goes – one of our few “hard rules” is that we never involve another person in our sessions.

  • Girl on the net says:

    Hey – thank you all so much for your comments! It’s really interesting to see what other people think of this. The ‘lizard brain’ thing I’ve heard of but it hadn’t occurred to me.

    I reckon one of the things I can totally get behind is a shared fantasy during sex – whispering a story to each other while you’re shagging. I had a dude who used to do that with me quite a lot and it was AMAZINGLY hot. But I vaguely recall that in those situations we’d tend to have more straightforward sex – missionary or whatever – perhaps because we just wouldn’t be able to focus as much on the story if we were doing anything other than lazily rubbing against each other.

    Thank you all!

  • seasideslut says:

    Sometimes another person will pop into my head fleetingly while I’m fucking – but my thoughts tend to be too slippery to go any further than that. I tend to feel that if I really want to think about somebody or something else while I’m fucking, I’m fucking the wrong person and should probably stop. Other than that I’d say I’m like you in that I am just in the moment; what I’m feeling is physical and sensual rather than cerebral.

  • I’m with you on this one. When I’m having sex the only thing I’m thinking about is the sex. Generally things like:
    Does she enjoy this?
    God she has lovely hair, eyes, boobs, arse etc.
    Mmmm, that feels good.
    Please, not now, give me a little bit longer, I’m not ready to cum yet

    I am certainly not thinking about anyone else, I’m concentrating, if that’s the correct word, on what I’m doing or having done to me.

    KW

  • Thinker says:

    I do create fantasies in my head with random people I think are hot – partner and I have been together for almost 10 years and he still drives me wild, but to keep the sex regular, I sometimes create fantasies. Perhaps it’s because we’re not terribly kinky or because I’m obsessed with novelty. So once in a while I think about guys I think are hot – people who have flirted with me or the occasional cute celebrity (erhem – John Stewart or Idris Elba!).

  • Bravo. :)

    I don’t think I’ve ever imagined my partner as someone else, although I wrote this about some sex I had once upon a time, so there is a strong chance it actually happened:

    ‘Well this is fun!’ I thought to myself, widening my perspective a little. Temporarily observing the scene in the third person, I imagined myself as Christian Bale in American psycho, looking at himself in the mirror while fucking… I mean I imagined myself as Christian Bale without the muscle flexing and murdering… but then even with those caveats I didn’t find the idea of being Christian Bale very erotic, so I went back to imagining myself as me.

  • Desire on wheels says:

    Not my thing either. Occasionally my mind wanders and I realise I’m thinking about something mundane, but that’s just a lapse in concentration. Once I made a joke to my partner during sex about how some people apparently start worrying about whether they’ve left the oven on during sex. He laughed, but then he stopped moving, and I asked why. “I’m trying to remember whether I left the oven on,” he admitted.

    Which is fair enough, because one time we got distracted in the kitchen, turned the hob off, and went off to bed for an hour. We came back when I noticed a burning smell. Yep, it turned out we hadn’t turned the hob quite off, and both lunch and the pan were wrecked. Fab sex, though.

    I kind of like the juxtaposition of the everyday and the sensual, I have to say. Groping while cooking is great fun. Coming up behind your partner, checking to see they’re not holding a pan or a knife, sliding your arms around them, breathing in their scent and the smell of the spices they’ve just put into the pan. Pushing each other into a wall for some serious kissing and breaking off now and again to stir the simmering food. There’s a nice short story in the Mammoth Book of Lesbian Short Stories about a relationship which is all cooking and sex, lines like “it has to cook slowly and for a very long time”. And my partner has quoted some chef who’s pointed out that sex and cooking are the only two activities which involve all five of your senses.

  • Not my thing.

    I have bad experiences with past sex partners when they’ve expressed longing sexual desires dressed up as a celebrity crush (or maybe the other way around, I don’t know) – often involving x famous person about whom I don’t see the attraction (examples: Deryck Whibley; Jon Richardson; Ben “Yahtzee” Crosshaw; …Tim Booth?) – and that always terrifies me for one of two reasons:

    (i) One word from x famous person and my girlfriend would be out of the door
    (ii) That they’d be thinking about them, rather than me, during sex

    This was all manifested from a bit during a Sum41 concert when my then-girlfriend hollered at Whibley to fuck her (and, most likely, would have don so if he had, for whatever reason, offered). To this day, things like girls with boyfriends having a fangirl crush on somebody unattainable or the episode of The Simpsons where Marge has a crush on Mel Gibson make me feel weird and uncomfortable.

    I don’t do celebrity crushes so I wouldn’t have anyone to fantasise about even if I wanted to. I’m aware many people do it and, if that’s their thing, more power to them – but, if I did so, I’d consider myself as being disrespectful: implying that whomsoever I’m shagging isn’t good enough, simply by virtue of not being a pretty famous person.

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