We all have fantasies. Some of them are highly romantic, like being swept away by Prince Harry to join the Royal Family in England. Others are darker, more risqué. We don’t always like to admit to having these fantasies, women especially, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have them. Would you feel comfortable telling your friends that you fantasize about being handcuffed to a bed post while someone coats your body in molasses? You probably never found the right time to mention it. Perhaps we wouldn’t find our fantasies so unusual if we realized how common they actually are.

Sex researchers have wondered the same thing. Several research studies have focused on what women fantasize about. A study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, entitled “What Exactly Is an Unusual Fantasy?”, wanted to determine which sexual fantasies are common among women. The researchers asked women living in Quebec to answer the Wilson’s Sex Fantasy Questionnaire. 799 women completed the questionnaire, of which the majority were heterosexual. The fifteen most common fantasies as reported by these women are listed below.

Keep one thing in mind as you scroll through this list: for many of the fantasies most commonly reported by women, the majority of women didn’t want the fantasy to actually come true. For example, most women who fantasized about being dominated sexually didn’t want to be dominated in real life. Sometimes a fantasy is just a fantasy.

15. Lesbian voyeurism

This may come as a surprise to some, but 42% of women fantasize about watching two women make love. Does this mean that women’s sexual orientations are more fluid than men’s? Have women been bitten by the bi-curiosity bug? Not necessarily. According to research, women in general are less category specific than men when it comes to arousal. This means that various sexual stimuli can arouse them, including watching bonobo monkeys mating. Women’s arousal in these cases is often limited to their genital responses, and does not match their statements about what arouses them. For example, even if a woman is heterosexual and states that she dislikes watching two women making love, she’ll become genitally aroused when watching a video of this. Just another quirk of the female body.

14. The diary of a dominatrix

Sales of whips and chains must be spiking, because more and more women are fantasizing about taking on a dominating role in the bedroom. Around 47% of women fantasize about dominating someone sexually. BDSM practices have always existed, but their popularity seems to have become more mainstream of late. Couple that with the reversal of stereotypical gender roles in society, and you have a recipe for women experimenting with sexual domination. Or at least imaging themselves dominating someone sexually. Remember, not all women who fantasize about domination in the bedroom want to actually dominate another person in the bedroom.

13. Getting Freaky with a stranger

It seems that a fairly large percentage of women fantasize about having a romantic encounter with someone they don’t even know. Nearly 49% of women indicated that they fantasize about having sex with an unknown person. This brings a whole new meaning to the term “stranger danger”. Hooking up with a stranger sounds thrilling, at least in our minds. I’ve seen countless movies where women sleep with men they barely know, experiencing the most passionate encounter of their lifetime. In reality, women who decide to hook up with a stranger are more likely to end up with an STD, or worse, in the clutches of a serial killer. I think it’s safe to assume that many women who fantasize about stranger sex don’t actually want to partake in it.

12. Sleeping with the stars

It should come as no surprise that women fantasize about sleeping with a celebrity. Nearly 52% of women copped to fantasizing about having sex with a star or well-known person on the Sex Fantasy Questionnaire. Hooking up with a movie star, famous author, or member of a popular band distinguishes a woman from the rest of her sex. It’s as if some of the celebrity’s fame rubs off on you; you feel marked as special for the rest of your life. Beliefs like this one explain why rock bands have so many groupies. A woman’s star fantasy doesn’t even have to include falling in love with the star, marrying him and having kids with him. Just going to bed with him, even for one night, is enough.

11. Bondage games

In keeping with the theme of BDSM, 52% of women fantasize about being tied up by someone in order to obtain sexual pleasure. This is where the bondage in BDSM comes in. What is it about giving up control that turns women on so much? Is it in our genes to be submissive in the bedroom? Science says that women, like most female mammals, are wired to be aroused by sexual submission. Consequently, women are attracted to dominant men. It’s an ancient sexual preference that still haunts us today. Hence the plethora of submissive fantasies. Just wait; there are more of them to come.

10. Oh my orgies

Threesomes are fun, but orgies are better. At least according to women’s fantasies. Around 57% of women fantasize about having sex with more than three people at a time. These group sex fantasies include both men and women. It’s easy to see why an orgy might be mentally appealing. In our fantasies, we can imagine ourselves surrounded by the naked bodies of highly attractive people, giving and receiving pleasure for days. In reality, it can be hard to find one person who we’re attracted to enough to sleep with, let alone four people or more. If you doubt what I say, then watch the movie A Good Old Fashioned Orgy. You’ll see what people who participate in group sex really look like.

9. Public indecency

There’s something tantalizing about the thought of being caught having sex in public. Many women agree; 57% of them fantasize about making love openly in a public place. According to this result, at least half of women have a secret thirst for sensation seeking, whether they act on that thirst or not. Hooking up with someone in the vicinity of prying eyes can be daring, exhilarating, and just a tad fetishistic. Whereas many women would be mortified to be caught with their pants down in public, these same women eagerly imagine it in the safety of their own bedrooms. If only I wouldn’t get caught, they muse.

8. Sexual submission

Once again, BDSM rears its controversial head in women’s fantasies. While many women fantasize about dominating someone sexually, more of them (nearly 65% to be exact) fantasize about being dominated sexually. With novels and movies like Fifty Shades of Grey flooding pop culture, it’s no wonder that women conjure up images of being subdued by Christian Grey types. Oh, and remember how women are wired for sexual submission? Add these two factors together and suddenly women’s submissive fantasies don’t seem so strange. Even feminists have admitted to indulging in these fantasies. How anti-feminist of them.

7. A most scandalous affair

We’ve all done it, fantasized about another man while having sex with our boyfriends or husbands. The proof is in the statistics, because 66% of women fantasize about having sex with someone that they know who is not their spouse. Maybe it’s the UPS delivery man who brings your orders from Amazon to your door every Friday. Or maybe it’s your hot neighbour who mows the lawn without his shirt on. One thing’s for sure: it isn’t your husband. Affairs are exciting, at least on TV they are. There’s even a whole show dedicated to an affair (aptly titled The Affair). But affairs are tricky in real life, which is why women don’t necessarily want their fantasies to come true.

6. Clicking their partner’s mouse

Giving pleasure to one’s partner is in itself a pleasurable thing. It certainly appears so, at least, when 68% of women fantasize about pleasuring their partner. It can feel like an accomplishment to know that you can elicit such desire in a romantic partner. It gives a woman a sense of power, of control, to be able to arouse a man. Yes, women like to give up control to men in the bedroom, but sometimes we like to take it back. Especially when we want a new pair of shoes. Imagining giving our partners pleasure also satisfies our instinct to nurture. Women: we’re nothing if not giving.

5. Getting their skittle diddled by their partner

Receiving pleasure is just as arousing as giving it. Ask the 71% of women who fantasize about being pleasured by their partner. Women like to let men take the wheel when it comes to experiencing sexual arousal. We just want to lie back, relax, and experience a rush of endorphins. Vibrators are more fun when someone else is using them on you. So are fingers. And shower heads. “I fly high with a little help from my friends,” is the tagline to women’s masturbation fantasies. We don’t really want to do it ourselves; we’d much rather have a partner to share the experience with.

4. Operation blow job

Performing oral sex on a man is so much more glamorous in women’s fantasies. It turns out that 72% of women fantasize about giving fellatio. In women’s fantasies, men don’t push their heads downward, or spew semen all over their faces. Women can control the length and pace of the activity. In reality, a blow job is just that: a job. It’s something that a man gets once a year on his birthday when he’s married. Women are different creatures in their fantasies. More accommodating, more willing to please. We’re not stressed or pressured in our fantasies, so performing oral sex becomes more enjoyable.

3. The oral question

Performing oral sex can be a chore, but never in our fantasies. Nearly 79% of women fantasize about taking part in fellatio or cunnilingus. It’s unclear what “taking part in” actually means. Does it mean both giving and receiving oral sex? Or is it a one-way street? Either way, pleasure is involved. I tend to assume that women are experiencing oral sex in these fantasies, since more women fantasized about this than about performing oral sex on a man. It’s also possible that the 8% difference is accounted for by homosexual women. What I wouldn’t give to ask the women surveyed a few follow-up questions.

2. Location location location

The unfamiliar can certainly be titillating. A whopping 82% of women fantasize about having sex in an unusual place. Examples of such places included in the Sex Fantasy Questionnaire are the office and public toilets. What I’d like to know is when the office became an unusual place to have sex in. Public toilets I get, but the office? Don’t people have workplace affairs all the time? In any case, sensation seeking strikes again. Sometimes, an unusual place is all that a woman needs to spice up a sex life that has been fizzling out. Try a horse stable on for size. Or the top deck of a double-decker bus. That one can even double as a public place. Two fantasies with one strategically chosen location.

1. Romantic seduction

Women are nothing if not romantics at heart. Just look at the numbers. Nearly 85% of women fantasize about having sex in a romantic location, like on a deserted beach. Blame all of those Harlequin romance novels that are marketed to us. A romantic setting can really put a woman in the mood for a romp in the hay, so to speak. The setting can provide the necessary romance that may be lacking in one’s sexual partner. Candles can distract a woman from a man’s oafishness, for example. I think it’s safe to say that this is one fantasy that women would actually like to see come true.

Sources: psychologytoday.com, businessinsider.com