This happens to me! It’s likely that I have dreams in which I have “unacceptable” sex partners (those who would be forbidden to me in real life for one reason or another), however I never remember having them.

If I start to have a dream where the outcome will be a voluntary, unacceptable sexual encounter, and I become aware of it, it wakes me up. It can be terribly frustrating, but my conscience won’t let my brain go there if it is engaged.

Lately, I also really like the idea of being forced to be one of the “bad guys” by the “real” bad guys. Like, they’re threatening me and my loved ones with violence unless I rape others. Somehow that absolves me from my fantastical sins.

Strange, aren’t we, as complex human beings?

I usually don’t appear as a character in my own sexual fantasies (not even as an observer). All of the players in the scene are fictional characters (with elaborate back-story, etc.) that I invent for the purpose of my fantasy.

I do that sometimes too, CL. Sort of. I sometimes have fantasies where everyone in it is a made-up fictional character… but at least one of the characters is something of an avatar for myself, and I project myself into their part of the story. Very much like a Mary Sue character in bad fan-fic.

I wonder if it is also a fantasy of acceptance. Many (most?) people with a fetish want and hope to find someone who can accept the fantasy and revel in it with them. A fantasy about a fantasy provides that: The fetish itself, and the fantasy of acceptance.

Interesting thought, Mister Harvest. That could be a big part of it. In my more extreme and fucked-up meta-fantasies, part of it is often about finding someone else who’s twisted enough to want to act them out with me. (In reality, I don’t know if I even want to act them out… but within the fantasy, “Someone else is as twisted as me!” is often a component.)

But I also had what you describe. I had fantasies about having fantasies, for Loki’s sake! I wonder if that happened to anyone else…
I fantasized about this man that I desperately want but cannot have. In the fantasy, he was asleep, and I was sitting near him, thinking about kissing him. I knew he would not wake up (in some versions there’s a long an elaborate backstory about how he’s ill and I tend to him, only to justify the main important fact: he’s asleep very deeply). So I totally can touch him, and caress him, and kiss him, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Only I know that would be wrong. But I desperately want it. I know it’s all I could ever have, he’ll never be mine. But it’s wrong… so in the fantasy, I just sit there, wanting him, and fantasizing about how I’d touch him… Pathetic, right?
But now I see it’s exactly like that dream you had about saying No. Very simple: when I can’t use my usual layer of detachment, I have to use another. And so I get to the same place as you.

I do something that is perhaps a little stranger, though: I usually don’t appear as a character in my own sexual fantasies (not even as an observer). All of the players in the scene are fictional characters (with elaborate back-story, etc.) that I invent for the purpose of my fantasy.

I’ve always wondered if anyone else does that. We could answer these questions and more if only people would discuss their masturbation fantasies more often… ;)

With my comparatively rare dom fantasies, by contrast, I always imagine my partner has agreed to it, but that’s at least in part because the fantasy almost always involves either me enjoying (and usually being very interested by) the fact that my partner is getting off on it and/or my partner returning the favour. Unlike the sub situation, I don’t think the decision to imagine the consent is the result of guilt at all, there. There are too many other reasons for it that relate directly to the main things about such fantasies that get me off.