I keep dreaming about other women. Does this mean I’m a bad husband? I love my wife – but these dreams are ca-razy.

Ian: While a lot of fantasy takes place while awake, whether during a particularly boring meeting at work or compliments of the Internet, our deepest sexual longings also find their way into our dreams. Sleep puts the brain on autopilot and allows the deeper desires inside of us to come out and play. As neuroscientist Mark Solms, a leading expert in the field of sleep research, explains: “Dreaming does for the brain what Saturday morning cartoons do for the kids: It keeps them sufficiently entertained so that the serious players in the household can get needed recovery time. Without such diversion, the brain would be urging us up and out into the world to keep it fully engaged.”

What are the majority of us dreaming about? A recent study by researchers David B. King and Teresa DeCicco at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, found that intercourse is the most common sexual behavior in dreams. A healthy 37 percent of participants reported having a sexual dream once a week, while a staggering 19 percent reported sex dreams up to five times per week! Interestingly, those who reported higher sexual satisfaction in their relationships tended to dream more often about their partner. Seventy-two percent of participants believed their sex dreams had meaning and 49 percent gained further insight into their waking relationships, past, present or potential.
So, what does this tell us? That sexual fantasies are completely normal and also helps us understand what’s going on in our waking lives. Too many of us feel guilty about our fantasy life, whether because we dream about someone other than our current partner or because our imagination runs wild with behavior we would never condone in real life.

Dreams free the brain to explore secret, extraordinary realms without the obligations of everyday life. Practicality, morality, and logic don’t apply. Flooded by a barrage of images, memories, and thoughts, you can basically kick back and enjoy the show. So, whatever dreams may come, enjoy them, try to learn from them, and don’t worry if they take you to bizarre or unfamiliar places. Many of us feel unnerved by our own fantasies, and all of us have comfort zones in terms of how far we will let our imaginations wander. At first blush, our fantasies often seem to sit in stark contrast to the moral and societal values with which we were raised. For this reason, we tend to self-censor and repress them instead of letting our fantasies breathe and flourish.