I Am Not a Fantasy
Don’t be mistaken — I’m just an ordinary human, like you
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When I started writing about sex, there were a few things that I knew would happen. I knew I would piss some people off. I knew I might receive occasional violent comments or even threats from men. And I knew there would be readers who, after one or two tastes of my articles, would tell me they were madly in love with me.
Within three months, all of these things had happened, of course, as I’m sure they happen to every woman who writes about her sexuality.
When it comes to male fans who claim I have enchanted them, I take it with a grain of salt, of course. In my twenties, this no doubt would have given me a big head. In my forties, though, I’m very aware of what is going on — I’m a fantasy.
We all do this. Don’t think I haven’t spent hours imagining how great my life would be if only Hugh Jackman was regularly pounding me into my mattress or if I could just hide in a dark corner somewhere with James McAvoy and let him nibble at me with those sexy lips.
In my young adulthood, I would have believed that they were exactly as I imagined and that, yes, we’d get along perfectly and everything would be so great and the moon would weep in joy for this dream come true.
Don’t think I haven’t spent hours imagining how great my life would be if only Hugh Jackman was regularly pounding me into my mattress…
Today, of course, I’m too old to believe that. I know that even my perfect fantasy men are real people with real tics and issues and hang-ups and needs and that (it pains me to say this) they would get on my nerves sometimes, they would annoy me from time to time, they wouldn’t perfectly satisfy my needs any more than my previous partners did (say it isn’t so!), and sometimes I would see them as the messy, gross humans that we all are.
But it’s interesting to me how hard we hold on to the fantasy — especially when it comes to love and sex.
And guess what I’ve discovered? Men chase riding-into-the-sunset fantasies as much as women do. It turns out they want intimacy, love, and super fucking hot sex, too. (Why do we always think we’re all so different?!)
I’ve also discovered that men are as vulnerable to over-romanticizing and over-sexualizing the objects of their crushes as women are. I know this to be true because here I am, with an ever-increasing collection of passionate fan mail from my male readers who so kindly and generously (thank you!) refer to me as a goddess, enchantress, and queen, and while yes, I am all those things…I’m also just a regular, boring, messy human being like everyone else.
You might accuse me of not appreciating myself enough, and while I thank everyone who is quick to shut down any comment of mine that they perceive as self-criticism, I promise, that’s not what this is about. This is about my desire to be uncomfortably honest, to pierce through fantasy, to explore our tendency to put sexually liberated women on a pedestal.
I do this because:
- I think it’s important — no, essential — to constantly assert reality in the midst of our online personas.
- I believe that in order to be healthy, sexually-fulfilled humans, we must tirelessly tear down all the romantic and sexual fantasies we’ve been taught to buy into so that we can learn to relate to one another body-to-body, mind-to-mind, and soul-to-soul without the rosy filters that tend to blind and ultimately separate us.
- I fear that women will never be able to truly achieve sexual liberation so long as our sexual freedom is perceived through the lens of fantasy, instead of as a normal, ordinary part of our human experience.
The real me
So let’s start with the online persona versus reality.
Yes, I am all the things you read and see here and on my social media accounts. Those photos are taken in places I frequent — my home, my woods, my neighborhood. I’m wearing the clothes I wear in real life (except for the Little Red Riding Hood cape, of course, though I fantasize about wearing that to the grocery store).
But also…remember that I’m not going to post photos of myself when I first wake up in the morning and my face is pillow-creased and puffy to the point of absurdity. I’m not going to post photos of myself after gardening for three hours when I’m soaked in sweat and looking bedraggled as fuck.
In other words, I can be pretty and sexy. I can also be ug-ly. And mostly, almost all the time, I’m something in between. In my everyday life, I’m typically wearing leggings, a blouse, a cardigan, no makeup, and I have my hair in a messy bun. Believe me when I say that if you met me in real life, you wouldn’t be in any rush to fuck me.
Because I’m an ordinary human.
And yes, I share my feelings in my writing, my desires, my hopes, my experiences. Yes, I approach it with a fuck-all attitude because I am tired of living any other way. I’m done waiting for the world to accept me and my sexuality the way I want it to.
But that doesn’t make me special or better than any other woman you’ve known. I will repeat again and again that I think the majority of women have deep, deep sexual desire and an even deeper desire to express it fully and shamelessly, but doing so in this culture is not accessible to us the way it has been to men. And this isn’t something that’s easy to “let go of,” “unpack,” or “shake off.”
Female sexual liberation is the work of a lifetime. It took me 43 years just to get to this point. For some it will take longer. Some will get there so much faster.
The point is — resist the temptation to put me on a pedestal simply because I seem more sexually open to you than some of the women you’ve known. I am just a human trying to find my way in all this, just like all the other women in this world.
The fantasy is a mindfuck
In our culture, we’re indoctrinated into believing the fantasies. From movies to video games to TV shows…it’s everywhere. We’re taught to believe that passion and deep love are moments of instantaneous knowing, that sex is easy, elegant, tidy, and uncomplicated, and that love (and sex) will heal the inherent loneliness of being human.
Men will carry women off into the sunset and women will forever fulfill their sexual needs thereafter. The end.
In my experience, I have found these messages to be deeply damaging, setting up unrealistic expectations. I know I have often gotten into a relationship looking to be saved, to be protected by my white knight, to be treated like a cherished wife straight out of a 1950s sitcom (so long as I was a good girl in the kitchen and a bad girl in the bedroom). I so often failed to see my former partners as men, as human beings, instead expecting them to be my knight, my rescuer, my hero. And as such, I was often disappointed and unhappy, which was entirely unfair to them.
Though I cannot speak to how this plays out for men, I can say that I observed, in my own relationships, the inner struggle my partners faced, trying to fulfill the white knight roles, but also resenting it. I also felt that many of my partners had similar expectations of me, roles that they put on me and expected me to cycle through: mother, skanky slut lover, faithful wife, helpmate, gentle lover…
I can remember specific, heartbreaking moments in which I knew my last partner could see beyond his rose-colored glasses, see me, a real human before him, and feel so dissatisfied. I don’t know what was worse — that I never felt I lived up to his fantasies, or that I often didn’t feel like he “saw” me for who I really was because he liked the fantasy version of me better.
Last year, the danger of the fantasy became so apparent to me when I got involved in what I can only call an emotional affair. As the weeks went by, I felt very strongly that he didn’t really know or understand me, at all. He was completely blinded by his fantasy of me. He insisted again and again that he knew me better than anyone and loved me deeply, but something inside me did not believe him.
Plain logic told me he couldn’t know me better than anyone, and my instincts told me he did not love me.
He loved the idea of me. But I’m not an idea.
While I’m thrilled that my articles inspire and arouse, what I really want is for them to encourage readers to look past the gauzy fantasies, look beyond the stories we tell ourselves, look beyond the façade. I long for us to be able to see one another as the messy, beautiful, fucked-up humans that we really are and to love what is really there.
Let me be real — and free
In order to be sexually liberated, a woman must not only be allowed to express herself in the world, but to also be seen in the world. Not to be seen as a fantasy but to be seen in all her ordinary, messy humanness.
We are real. We are complex.
The fantasies are simple. One-dimensional. They prize sexuality over personhood.
We need room in which to be human. We might be able to demand space in which to assert our sexuality, but it doesn’t matter if it’s received through cultural lenses that continue to compartmentalize us, to strip us down to our parts.
Dare to look at all of me — beyond the fantasy.
Please don’t misunderstand me — I am so grateful to every man who has sent me an encouraging email, to those who have shared their passion with me in very respectful ways. I’ll take it all, with deep gratitude.
But also, what I want more than anything at this stage in my life is for that admiration to come not just with depth but with breadth. That I am admired for all of the person that I am — not just because I am striving to achieve my own sexual liberation.
Know that I, like everyone, am a complex web of experiences, heartbreaks, desires, and joys. Know that I might be funny, sensual, and even occasionally sexy, but I also look like a full-on hag in the morning, I struggle with passionate mood swings, and I’m annoying as fuck.
This ain’t no sexy, happily-ever-after movie. This is messy, ugly, beautiful, wondrous real life.
So yes, I will happily accept your admiration. Just remember that I’m only human, too. Enjoy the fantasy, but don’t believe it.
Real life and real people are infinitely more interesting.
© Yael Wolfe 2020
You can read Elle Beau ❇︎’s great perspective on this here.
