What Do Women Actually Fantasize About? 10 Most Common Fantasies
The 10 Most Common Confessions, from My Secret Garden to Now
Can you guess what most women actually fantasize about? It’s just rarely spoken with honesty, or without being reduced to cliché. But since the 1970s, when Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden first invited women to anonymously confess their deepest erotic thoughts, a fuller picture has emerged —one that’s complex, deeply human, and still taboo in many circles.
Today, with digital submission platforms, therapy rooms, and confession-based communities, we have access to more data than ever. And it turns out that women’s fantasies, far from being random or indulgent, are precise emotional instruments — ways to reclaim power, dissolve shame, and touch parts of the psyche that everyday life keeps hidden.
Here are the ten most common themes, drawn from Friday’s archives and the thousands of confessions we’ve collected and studied since.
1. Emotional Connection and Transcendent Intimacy
Women often fantasize about being completely seen — emotionally, sexually, even spiritually. These are not “vanilla” scenarios, though they may appear gentle from the outside. They are hot because of their intensity. A partner who looks into her, who reads her body like scripture, who worships her slowly and without question. Friday published dozens of fantasies in this vein: a man who draws her bath, dries her off, lays her out, and takes hours to devour her. No rush. No words. Just knowing. That level of attention becomes erotic through its patience.
2. Being Taken by More Than One
The multiple-partner fantasy is not about orgies or porn tropes. It’s about being wanted — so completely, so impossibly — that one partner isn’t enough. Friday’s women described “two lovers” who knew how to cooperate, or strangers who appear without invitation but somehow know her body. Modern versions echo that: threesomes, yes, but more often two men focused solely on her, or a female partner joining in with deep trust. The multiplicity is symbolic: of abundance, of being claimed, of ceasing to feel too much or too little for anyone.
3. The Forbidden: Teachers, Bosses, Strangers, Authority
What’s not allowed becomes a mirror. In My Secret Garden, women wrote of priests, professors, older brothers’ friends — figures they were told to avoid. Today, these fantasies still persist, though more women describe their “forbidden” objects as emotionally unavailable exes, married lovers, or women they’d never dare approach. The thrill is not just sexual. It’s transgressive. And in fantasy, there is no consequence—only the pleasure of wanting what you shouldn’t.
4. Surrender and Submission
One of the most enduring categories, and the one most misunderstood. Women who carry responsibility in work, caretaking, and emotional labor often dream of giving it all up. Not forever — just for the night. To be told what to do. To be taken care of. To feel held by someone who can handle her entirely. Friday’s archives are filled with these scenes: women blindfolded, bound, made to beg — not because they are weak, but because they are tired of being strong. Modern confessions echo the same.
5. Being Wanted Beyond Logic
There is a deep, aching desire to be desired—to be craved beyond reason. Women fantasize about being followed into elevators, pressed against walls, touched in secret corners. Not assaulted, but claimed. The subtext: “I want you so badly I can’t help myself.” The man in Friday’s stories is often unable to wait. He breaks social rules to get to her, not because she is passive, but because she is undeniable. Desire, in this case, is a proxy for power.
6. Past Lovers and Parallel Realities
Memory becomes fantasy in the quiet hours. Many women return, in imagination, to past lovers — to redo what went wrong, to say what they never said, or simply to relive the good parts without the emotional fallout. These fantasies are about reclamation: of closure, of clarity, of an erotic identity that may have been dulled or denied. “What if” is not just regret — it’s creative revision.
7. Celebrities, Fictional Characters, and the Unreachable
Fantasy thrives on safety. Women often imagine sex with those who will never become real —musicians, actors, novel protagonists, even mythological figures. These imagined encounters offer freedom from performance, negotiation, or judgment. One woman confessed in My Secret Garden to sleeping with Zeus; another described Captain Kirk. Today, we read about Marvel characters, historical icons, AI lovers. The more unreachable, the safer the surrender.
8. Public Spaces and Risky Places
A common through-line in both Friday’s work and contemporary data: sex somewhere you shouldn’t. The beach. The woods. A dressing room. The risk isn’t just logistical — it’s existential. It taps the same current as being desired, but adds exposure. It says: I want to be seen, not as good, but as hungry. As wild. As beyond control. And the setting makes it more vivid.
9. Power in Her Hands
While many women fantasize about submission, an equal number imagine domination. They want to be in charge — fully, ferociously. They want to tell someone what to do, to orchestrate pleasure with precision, to be begged, worshipped, obeyed. These fantasies challenge old scripts. They are not reversals of patriarchy — they are rehearsals of agency. Friday didn’t see as much of this in the ’70s. Today, it’s a rising theme.
10. Fantasies Beyond Imagination
Some fantasies don’t fit categories. They aren’t about dominance or devotion or forbidden lust. They live somewhere stranger — on the edge of absurdity, art, and the unconscious. They come unbidden, fully formed, and often leave the dreamer unsure whether to laugh, climax, or confess it to no one.
They’re rarely talked about, but they’re always there. And what they reveal is this: there is no such thing as “too weird.”
We’ve read fantasies involving subway poles dripping with pheromones. Women licking the steel. Watching men’s bulges pulse through sweatpants on the F train. One woman confessed to climaxing in silence from just the idea of being watched chewing gum too slowly.
Some women write of being taken by animals — dogs, horses, or imagined hybrids, rendered lovingly and without irony. Others become aliens with multiple sex organs, able to give and receive pleasure simultaneously, to genders that do not exist on Earth.
One woman wrote about shrinking to the size of a doll and being kept in a velvet-lined drawer, only pulled out when her owner was aching. Another imagined being turned into a statue — watched, worshipped, masturbated over, but never touched. Some write of sex with ghosts. Others with entire football teams. A few crave bodily transformation: having a penis, being two people at once, being none. A number of women confessed to Nancy Friday imagining being fertile soil
These fantasies aren’t the majority. But they show up. And when they do, they remind us of the most important truth Nancy Friday uncovered in her work: there is no normal. There is only what is true for you.
So if you’ve ever wondered whether your fantasies are “too much” or “too strange,” trust this: someone, somewhere, is already imagining more. And this is all beautiful and inspiring.
Why Women's Sexual Fantasies Matter
These aren’t simply erotic preferences. They are symbolic expressions of unmet needs, personal histories, emotional cravings, and identity formation. They offer a stage where women can experiment with power, receive without apology, and feel what reality rarely provides.
Understanding them is not about pathologizing desire — it’s about validating complexity. What emerges from My Secret Garden, and from every anonymous submission since, is a call for empathy. For deeper conversations. For spaces where women can say what they want, not because they want to act on it, but because it’s part of who they are.
Enter the Garden
Fruit & Flowers, an erotic intelligence platform from New York continues Nancy Friday’s legacy with reverence and fire. Anonymous confessions become AI-narrated performances — poetic, explicit, emotionally honest. Each one invites you to hear the voices too often left in silence.
If you’ve never spoken your fantasy aloud, now is your chance. We are listening.
Her Secret Garden is a project by Fruit & Flowers, continuing Nancy Friday's revolutionary work of giving women permission to speak their desires without shame. All submissions remain anonymous, and participation is always voluntary and self-directed.
Desire is more than an impulse. It’s a compass, a memory, a spell. At Juicy Times, we publish stories, studies, and first-person confessions about erotic intelligence and emotional truth.
Dive in here.
