Can’t Get Bare From Here

My boyfriend of two years recently confessed (after a few drinks) that he fantasizes about other women during sex -- not just imaginary women, but his exes and my girlfriends. I’m especially shocked because I often initiate sex, and try hard to satisfy him. Thanks to his revelation, I’m feeling insecure, not very interested in sex with him, and incredibly uncomfortable around friends he's fantasized about. Is his behavior normal?

--Feeling Cheated On

This sounds like a case of premature organ donation. There are all these stories, supposedly mythic, of people waking up in Vegas, in a bathtub of ice, missing a kidney. Then, there’s your boyfriend, found floating in a bottle of Jim Beam, apparently missing his brain.

Now, there could be some alternate universe out there where it’s a wise idea to let a woman know, “You may as well have a bag over your head during sex because I’m thinking of Eva Longoria.” In our universe, merely having a thought is not considered reason enough to release it into the atmosphere. Just ask all the other men (and women) who recast the lead when they’re in bed, yet manage to avoid alerting the editorial staff of Entertainment Tonight.

It isn’t every man who makes his head home to a harem. No, only 98 percent of men -- according to Thomas V. Hicks and Harold Leitenberg (Journal of Sex Research, Feb. ‘01), who asked heterosexuals in relationships if, over a two-month period, they’d fantasized about anybody but their current squeeze. This leaves a whole 2 percent of men -- woohoo! -- whose trips to fantasyland don’t involve leasing a bus for their woman’s friends and family.

Eighty percent of wives and girlfriends surveyed did admit to restaffing their sexual fantasies. Still, if the mind had fire laws, most of those violating them would be men. Not only are men 11 times more likely to psychically call in a sub, in another study, Bruce J. Ellis and Donald Symons found that men often ditch one imaginary alternate for another mid-fantasy. It doesn’t matter how hot a man’s old lady is, how much he loves her, or how hard she works to satisfy him. Male sexuality is all about variety. Men are hard-wired to want you, the entire girls’ dorm next door, and the entire girls’ dorm next to that.

So, what’s preventing them from going door-to-door trolling for sex? For starters, the average guy’s chances of finding any takers are right up there with his chances of bending spoons with his thoughts. Still, some contend it’s wrong to even have “lust in your heart.” Well, duh! All you should find there is a bunch of blood and maybe a few clogged arteries. People’s brains, on the other hand, are biologically programmed to scan the horizon for hotties, then notify their libido whenever one crosses their path: “Imagine bending THAT over the cash register!”

Nobody wants to admit sex can get a little ho-hum at the two-year mark. But, when it does, nobody should admit they’re hotting it up by bringing their girlfriend’s address book to bed. If your boyfriend doesn’t have lime Jell-O for brains, and isn’t just plain mean, maybe he was hoping the truth would set him free -- setting you up to do the emotional heavy lifting of breaking it off. Considering how difficult it must be to elbow through the crowd in your head to have sex with him, let alone have lunch with your best friend, maybe you need to give him the heave. In time, he should find himself much more focused on you during sex -- just as soon as he starts having it with his next girlfriend.