Guest Blogger - Marilyn Brant - The Secrets We Keep

What women fantasize about (and sometimes share but are often afraid to) about crushes on men outside of their committed relationships.

There's often a sense of relief (as well as joy) in being part of a serious, committed relationship. Take marriage, for instance. How nice, we think, that we’ve finally gotten hitched to this person we spent countless months dating. How delightful we can now make life plans together and go out and purchase furniture or the random piece of art that your mother squints at and says looks “very strange.” You don’t care. You’re in love! You’re too busy rejoicing that you’re no longer subject to the slings and arrows of courtship and can finally settle down and stop having to worry about sucky first...or fifth...dates with strangers.

It’s utopian for a while. Then reality sets in.

You realize you’re never, ever going to kiss (or sleep with) another man again. You might be 25 when you make this lifetime commitment to another. Or 32. Or 47. But there will most likely be a moment of panic when you think, “Oh, crap. Unless I become an actress and get cast in a film opposite Johnny Depp or Daniel Craig, I’m never again going to make out with someone really hot that isn’t my husband!”

So, in idle moments, you begin to wonder what if? What if you made a mistake and should really be with someone else? What if you followed through on your fantasy of kissing that cute handyman who comes in once a year to check the furnace? What if your boyfriend from high school, the teen you thought you loved with all of your adolescent heart, wrote to you and finally explained why he broke up with you…and said he was sorry?

The big secret is that most women fantasize about these things at some point or other. It’s a normal, natural part of coming to understand our relationship boundaries and the seriousness of ourcommitment to someone else. But we tend to be afraid to admit to our friends that we’ve imagined such scenarios (sometimes in surprisingly vivid detail) because we don’t want our morality or our loyalty called into question. Because we don’t want to be seen as doubting, fickle, unfaithful—and, yet, we feel dishonest when we try to hide our real feelings, too.

But, if we think about it, we know we’re not alone. We have only to listen to the radio or watch shows that explore the idea of being “torn between two lovers” to realize that the capability to find more than one person attractive is part of the human condition. Realizing this truth doesn't mean we have to act on our attraction, but I think it helps to admit that different people bring out different sides of us. And getting to explore a less-often-used facet of our personality can be alluring. It can feel revitalizing. Far more powerful than any actual attraction to another person is an addiction to the headiness of infatuation itself. For a brief while, we feel that intoxicating power of youthful passion again, and who—at thirty-, forty- or fifty-something—wouldn’t want a jolt of that on occasion?
 
So, if you experience these feelings, know you’re in the company of millions. You need only to turn to pop culture to find countless examples of such fantasies being played out in songs, TV shows, books or films. Do you have a favorite literary/musical/cinematic love triangle? Bella, Edward and Jacob? Christine, Raoul and The Phantom? Rick Springfield, his pal Jesse and Jesse’s Girl? I'd love to know!

Stay tuned for next week's post, "Riding the Rails of the Marriage Coaster."

- Marilyn Brant, www.marilynbrant.com, http://marilynbrant.blogspot.com
Click here for more of Marilyn's posts.

Marilyn Brant is the award-winning women's fiction author of ACCORDING TO JANE (2009), FRIDAY MORNINGS AT NINE (Oct. 2010) and a still-untitled third novel (fall 2011), all from Kensington Books. She's been a classroom teacher, library staff member, freelance writer and national book reviewer. Since turning to writing, her novels have won the prestigious Golden Heart Award, Single Titles Reviewers' Choice Award, Booksellers' Best Award; and selected as Doubleday Book Club and Book-of-the-Month Featured Alternate Selections. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and son, surrounded by towers of books that often threaten to topple over and crush her.

 

Comments

[Marilyn Brant]

Victoria, that's so interesting that you find women who are unaware that their fantasizing! What a powerful thing it must be for them when they begin to recognize it. I do think that we can learn a lot about ourselves by understanding our fantasies -- not necessarily to act on them but as another path toward self knowledge and, as you said, to fuel creativity. Great point!

Michelle, I absolutely agree :). It's so important to recognize that line between reality and fantasy. I think the more people come to accept that fantasizing is a normal thing, the easier it is to keep it in it's place and not act irrationally or put a good relationship in jeopardy because of it. And I do think our fantasies -- if we analyze them -- give us clues as to what we'd like to see more of in our relationships. (Not only in a romantic sense, btw, but also in the scenarios we daydream about as far as work situations or with friends and family.)

[Michelle]

Fantasies are good as long as you realize that this is all that you are doing and don't take them seriously. My fiance and I BOTH TELL each other who we are attracted to and I think that most people are fans of people in mainstream but realize that line between reality and fantasy.

[Victoria S]

Here, here Marilyn! In my work as a pleasure coach (somatic sex educator), I find that women are often completely unaware that they fantasize. I think there's a multi-layer censorship mode (cultural, societal, familial, etc.) that gets activated in to edit out these delicious thoughts. Delicious thoughts increase vibrating sexual energy in the body. Vibrating sexual energy increases confidence, creativity and a sense of being alive. It all begins with a simple act of self-permission. (For clarity: I am not suggesting these thoughts turn into impulses, although that's a personal choice.)

[Marilyn Brant]

LOL, Edie! I love Superman :). When I was doing research for Friday Mornings at Nine, I was trying to figure out how much info I could uncover by Googling someone (since one of my characters did it to find out more about her ex). So, I looked up a few people from my past and was surprised by how many details I came across online! But one of them -- someone with a fairly common name -- was a lot harder to track down than the others...so I know what you mean!

[Edie Ramer]

Do comics count as literary? How about Superman, Clark Kent and Lois?

I think most people once in a while think about old boyfriends/lovers. Some of them might even google them, and then find out they had a name more common than you realized. Not that I'm talking about myself, of course.