Sexual fantasies, like all stories, are not just running away from something. They are moving towards something important!

I cringe whenever anyone belittles the art of storytelling as unimportant, entertaining fairyfloss fluff and reduces the magic of stories to "an escape from the harsh realities of life".

I cringe when sexual fantasies are described in the same language. While both can absolutely be used to escape, they are so much more than that! 

The art of storytelling has been central to passing down human wisdom and insight for all of human history. From fire-side bards and tribal story-keepers to modern movies and marketing, stories influence, inform us, and activate internal responses that transport and transform us.

In fact, stories are such powerful forms of communication that it is no exaggeration to say that the whole world runs on stories. 

We are hardwired to respond to stories on multiple levels;

• Emotionally
• Physically (goosebumps, tears, laughter, squeals, nervous system responses)
• Intellectually
• And, for want of a better word, on a soul level.  

Stories don't just pass down morals and advice for how to deal with various external practicalities and social troubles; they also create and share models and maps of our inner experiences of being human. That is, stories take us for a walk through our emotions, psyches and consciousness itself! Stories can change us and take us somewhere inside ourselves. Both individually and collectively.

Stories have powerful effects on us!

Who has not wept in sorrow or whooped in heart-pumping victory through watching a movie? Who has not fallen in love with a character and wished revenge on the villain? 

I know I strutted like an Amazonian warrior when I left the cinema after I watched Wonder Woman for the first time. I walked home alone at night in a dodgy area of inner Sydney, just like I had many times before, only this time, I did not make myself small or think of myself as a potential victim that an opportunist predator might sexually harass or mug. I thought of myself as someone with the right to be there and the right to take up space. I felt in my body what it was like to be safe and powerful.

In other words, I left the theatre changed. I now had a vicariously lived experience of being a woman and being powerful in specific ways I had not experienced before. 

I felt all the emotions and nervous system responses alongside the characters in the movie. My internal experience was far more than fun escapism. My relationship to my own power changed through being swept into a story. I now had a body/feeling/thought-level template I could draw on.

Good writers know this. Whenever they tell a story, they very deliberately construct the inner experience of each character and hold that in mind as they craft that character's actions and responses to various life situations.

Stories show how character's attitudes/beliefs/approaches to problem-solving all evolve over the course of the narrative; and how that change creates an effect for good, or for ill. We get to vicariously live the psychological and emotional effects alongside the characters. We get to try on various consequences for various responses to common situations. 

In other words, we get to practice being whole people, encountering all that life contains: grief, love, being a victim, being a villain, a hero, being misunderstood, unrequited love, rejection, desire for revenge, victory and loss, impossible choices between the good of an individual versus the good of the collective. Not just the nice bits of life but all of it.

~ We get to try on different life strategies and make mistakes without real-life devastating consequences. We get to process all that it means to be human through stories. We get to transform our inner worlds. 

~ We get to shift our internal state from feeling one thing to feeling another entirely. 

~ More than that, we get to be guided to parts of ourselves we didn't know existed and open up to valuable aspects of ourselves we didn't know how to get to before.

~ We get to practice forming relationships with these parts of ourselves and develop strategies for working with them. 

~ Sometimes, when listening to masterful storytellers, we even get to enter into different states of consciousness with even more profound and valuable benefits. 

How this plays out in sexual fantasies

Sexual fantasies are just stories. 

In my former role as a sex worker and professional dominatrix, I discovered that my real role was to be a master storyteller. That is, to listen to the fantasies (stories) that my client's own mind came up with, and then bring their inner world to life - within the safe buffer of consensual play. We symbolically lived the story together on an embodied level.

Sex is the theatre of the psyche. 

It was vital that I trusted my client's sexual fantasies, rather than try to change them or make them politically correct. Stories have different logic than real life, but that logic is an important part of what makes them valuable. I soon learned that if I trusted their fantasies, powerful things would happen.

You see, no one knows you better than your own psyche does. It creates the perfect story to overcome all your resistance to vulnerability and provides the map of how to ignite your body, heart and mind. It knows how to guide you to profound erotic states of consciousness. Great sex, of course, satisfies us on all these levels. 

The chance to live out your fantasies, rather than just masturbate while thinking about them, takes the magic of storytelling to the next level! 

Of course, sexual fantasies, like all stories, are not always about things that can be practically lived out. And honestly, most of us don't really want to live out sexual fantasies exactly like they are in our mind's eye. I discovered that it is much more effective to notice the story mechanisms within a person's sexual fantasy and bring that to life instead. 

Your sexual desire is a master storyteller.

More than just knowing how to get you horny, your sexual desire knows the exact story that your ego needs to hear in order to convince it to temporarily let go of the driver's wheel. This allows you to access the vulnerability of pleasure and connection and other valuable parts of yourself.

In other words, sexual fantasies don't just create an escape. They take us somewhere inside ourselves that we do not have access to in our everyday lives. 

If you would like to learn more about how to understand your sexual fantasies and deliberately create sexual or BDSM experiences based on the story mechanisms contained within them, then check out my sexual fantasy coaching program. 

Of course, the master of all master storytellers in your unconscious and send you messages in the form of sexual desires and fantasies. The very first step to being masterful at creating sexperiences, is to learn how to be in an active relationship with the part of yourself that creates sexual desires in the first place.

The Desire Compass is an embodied practice that teaches you step-by-step exactly how to do that.

If you are not ready to commit to the full erotic mastery program above, feel free to book a complimentary discovery zoom call with me, and we can discuss learning The Desire Compass as 5-week private coaching package, or more casual sex coaching. 

Warmly, 

Artemisia de Vine
artemisiadevine.com