In the summer of 2019 Dear Sugars, the iconic advice podcast, published an episode titled “Dark Fantasies.” A woman wrote in, “Ever since I started being a sexual being I’ve had terrible fantasies. Incest of every kind. Teachers having sex with their underage students. Gangbangs in public bathrooms. I cannot get turned on without thinking of these story lines. Did something bad happen to me that I have repressed so much I don’t even have a hint of it?” she asks. “And how do I make it stop?”
The special guest on the episode was a Dr. Ian Kerner, a renowned sex therapist and author of the famed She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman.
Dr. Kerner gave an insightful, learned glimpse in the psyche of sex that I had never encountered. He offered that to reach orgasm women often need to almost shut their brains off entirely–or rather, need to detach from the stresses of everyday life. Bizarre and strange fantasies are therefore a way to take one out of the everyday, where self-conciousness and inhibition can’t suppress arousal and stimulation.
I’ve been following Dr. Kerner’s work ever since and was overjoyed to have the opportunity to connect with him and pose some of my most searing sexual questions. In my conversation with Dr. Kerner we discuss dark fantasies and more–including the rise of sexual anxiety in men, dream orgasms, and what the world would look life if we were all truly sexual liberated.
Dr. Kerner’s new book, So Tell Me About The Last Time You Had Sex, is out now and available through various retailers and local bookstores.