Nobody quite knows how private their inner life is until they see what other people admit to when the questionnaire is anonymous. The gap between what Britts will happily discuss at a dinner party and what actually turns up in their heads at three in the morning is enormous, and closing it a little is what makes fantasy research so satisfying to read. You go in expecting to find out what other people are like. You come out mostly reassured that you are, in fact, extremely normal. Maybe even vanilla.
A fantasy is not a plan. Having imagined something does not commit you to doing it, wanting to do it, or being the kind of person who would. The imagination is a much wider territory than the actual behaviour of any given adult, and treating fantasy and intention as the same thing gets the whole subject wrong before it starts.
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How do we know what people fantasise about?
Sexual fantasy research comes from a few different sources and each has its strengths and limits. Large national surveys like Natsal, the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, provide excellent data on British sexual behaviour but do not measure fantasy directly. Specialist academic studies collect detailed self-reports from smaller samples. Large online surveys reach thousands of people but self-select for particular interests. Community-focused research zooms in on specialist populations.
The most substantial British-focused effort has been Brett Kahr’s British Sexual Fantasy Research Project, which collected reports from thousands of Brits and was published in book form as Sex and the Psyche in 2007. More recently, researchers at King’s College London including Ashley Brown, Edward Barker and Qazi Rahman have developed the Sexual Fantasies and Behaviors Inventory, a research tool used to map both mainstream and paraphilic sexual interests across large multi-country samples including substantial UK participation.
The point of naming these sources is not to make the article feel academic. It is to signal that the rankings you find in ordinary lifestyle articles are often unmoored from any actual evidence, and the version below tries to stay closer to the ground.
The common British fantasy landscape
Sex with someone other than your regular partner
Fantasies about people who are not the person you are currently with come out consistently near the top of every study that asks. Strangers, celebrities, colleagues, ex-partners, people met casually in ordinary life. The specifics vary. The category is enormous.
The interesting finding is that these fantasies appear often across both single and partnered adults, including people in happy relationships. Fantasy of this kind does not predict cheating, dissatisfaction, or anything else predictive of behaviour. It appears to be a normal feature of adult imagination that runs mostly independent of what is happening in our adult romantic lives.
Group sex and threesomes
Fantasies involving more than two people are one of the most consistently reported categories in adult fantasy research, and the appeal typically breaks down into elements you can identify separately: novelty, variety, the psychology of being watched, the presence of multiple partners at once, and curiosity about combinations of dynamics that ordinary two-person sex don’t allow.
Reported fantasy of this kind is substantially more common than actual behaviour. Brits thinking about threesomes vastly outnumber the people having them, and the gap is one of the clearer illustrations of how fantasy and intention diverge in real life.
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Dominance and submission
The fantasy category where Brits turn out to be more adventurous than the national self-image suggests. Reported figures from the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project and from more recent UK-inclusive kink surveys suggest substantial minorities of adults report fantasies involving being dominant, being submissive, giving up control, taking control, consensual restraint, or various forms of negotiated power exchange.
The recent Brown and colleagues research at King’s College London has developed some of the most detailed available mapping of how these interests distribute in UK-inclusive samples, and their published work in the Journal of Sex Research in 2026, sometimes referred to as “A Survey of the United Kink-dom,” provides one of the more comprehensive UK-focused pictures of kink interests currently available.
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Roleplay
Costumes, uniforms, scenarios, characters, alternate versions of oneself. Roleplay fantasies sit on a wide spectrum from the playful and romantic through to the openly theatrical, and the category shows up frequently in UK research on adult sexual imagination. The appeal often runs on temporary transformation rather than on any specific costume or setting. Adults who report enjoying roleplay tend to describe it as a break from ordinary identity for the duration of the encounter, and the specifics they choose are often less important than the fact of the transformation.
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Being watched and watching
Consensual exhibitionist and voyeuristic fantasies are frequently reported and often overlap. The consent line is important: adult fantasy involving being seen by an imagined observer is a completely different category from any real-world non-consensual observation, and no serious writing on the topic treats them as the same thing.
The psychology of these fantasies typically runs on visibility, attention, secrecy, and the specific charge of being either the observer or the observed. Both roles have their enthusiasts, and many adults report responding to both across different fantasies.
Sex in unusual or risky-feeling locations
Hotels, cars, workplaces, parties, outdoor settings, or anywhere that carries a psychological quality of novelty or borrowed excitement. British adults report location-based fantasies frequently, and the appeal often lives in the setting rather than in any specific act. What makes it a fantasy category worth naming is the way ordinary sex changes when the imagined location changes, without anything else about the encounter necessarily being different.
Romantic and emotionally intense fantasies
Balancing out the kinkier material, plain romantic fantasy remains one of the most commonly reported categories in every survey that measures it. Being deeply desired, being pursued by an idealised partner, intense emotional connection, high-affection or high-passion scenarios that focus on the quality of the relationship rather than on any specific act. This category is a healthy reminder that adult fantasy is not synonymous with the more theatrical corners of the field.
Fetishes involving objects, clothing or body parts
Fantasy attention that has organised itself around something specific. Feet. Lingerie. Stockings. Shoes. Latex. Leather. Particular fabrics. Particular body features. UK research on paraphilic interests, including the Brown and colleagues inventory research, has documented that fetish-adjacent interests appear with meaningful frequency across the general adult population, and the mainstream conversation about them substantially understates how common they actually are.
BDSM and impact-play fantasies
Bondage, spanking, restraint, sensory play, consensual pain, and the broader family of BDSM-adjacent fantasy content. UK-inclusive research suggests these interests are substantially more common than the mainstream conversation acknowledges, though the majority of adults who report the fantasies do not necessarily act on them in structured BDSM practice.
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Same-sex or same-gender fantasies
Reported by substantial minorities of adults across every sexual orientation category the research covers. Fantasy, orientation, and behaviour are related but distinct concepts, and the presence of same-sex content in someone’s fantasy life does not by itself indicate anything definitive about their identity or their preferences in real-world partnering. UK research has consistently found this category more common than social assumptions about who reports what would predict.
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Being desired
A category worth naming separately because it is more common than any specific act would suggest. Fantasies where the central content is the experience of being wanted, admired, pursued, or considered irresistible by another person. The specific sexual content is often secondary to the emotional state, and adults with this dimension in their fantasy life often report that the “being wanted” quality carries more of the charge than what technically happens in the imagined scene.
Novelty for its own sake
Fantasies that do not fit neatly into any of the categories above but share the underlying quality of being different from the person’s usual sexual life. Novelty itself can be erotic, and a substantial fraction of reported adult fantasy sits inside this broader “something different” territory rather than in any particular themed subcategory.
Do men and women have different sexual fantasies?
The honest answer is that the differences the research finds are usually differences in frequency or emphasis rather than absolute categories. Men and women both report the full range of fantasy content described above. The proportions differ somewhat, and specific themes show up more consistently in one group than the other, but the overlap is much larger than the mainstream conversation about gender differences would suggest.
The Brown and colleagues inventory research provides some of the most nuanced current evidence on this in UK-inclusive samples, showing patterns that vary by both gender and sexual orientation without producing the clean binary separation that pop psychology loves to claim.
Would people actually do what they fantasise about?
This may be the single most important thing the fantasy research tells us. The gap between what British adults imagine and what British adults do is enormous, and it is enormous in a systematic direction. Fantasy content substantially exceeds behavioural intention. Adults report fantasising about specific things they know they would never want to happen in real life, and the imagined version and the real-world version are recognisably different psychological territories.
This distinction matters most when the fantasy content touches subjects like dominance and submission, being watched, unusual locations, or taboo-adjacent scenarios. Adults with these fantasies are often not seeking to enact them. They are enjoying the imagined version, which is a different thing. Sharing a fantasy with a partner is not the same as requesting it, and the healthiest conversations between partners about fantasy tend to start with that distinction firmly in place.
Why do people have sexual fantasies?
The research picture is genuinely mixed. Fantasy appears to serve a range of functions across different adults: curiosity, novelty, emotional processing, imaginative rehearsal, escapism, response to media and memory, exploration of power and desire, and processing of experiences the person has actually had. Recent UK-led research on sexual interests has found relationships between interest patterns and factors like sociosexuality and general attitudes toward sex, while many of the specific developmental explanations that older theories favoured have not held up under closer scrutiny.
The honest summary is that there is no single reason people have sexual fantasies, and adults who accept this tend to have a healthier relationship with their own imagination than adults who keep trying to reduce it to one explanation.
What about London? Are Londoners more adventurous?
The question everyone secretly wants answered honestly, so here is an honest attempt.
London is enormous, diverse, and hosts more visible sexual subcultures than anywhere else in the UK. Kink clubs, specialist communities, BDSM educational events, sex-positive gatherings, and countless smaller networks all operate more openly in London than they typically do in smaller British cities. From the outside, this can make it look as though London is somehow uniquely adventurous.
The evidence for that specific claim is much thinner than the visibility suggests. One 1981 study of a small London sample identified four broad fantasy factors, exploratory, intimate, impersonal, and sadomasochistic, but the sample was too small and the study too old to support any claim about modern London as a whole. More recent UK-inclusive research from King’s College London, including the Brown and colleagues inventory work, provides more current data but does not typically compare London specifically to other UK regions.
The defensible conclusion: London may offer more visible opportunities for adults to find others who share particular interests, but visibility and community size are not the same thing as prevalence. A Londoner is not necessarily more likely to fantasise about a given thing than a resident of Manchester or Cardiff. They are, however, more likely to find a community organised around that fantasy if they want to.
Have British fantasies changed recently?
Some UK research conducted during and after the COVID-19 lockdown period identified changes in fantasy frequency and variety among younger adults, with some participants reporting increased fantasy activity when other outlets for sexual expression were reduced. Whether this represents a durable shift or a temporary response to unusual circumstances is not yet clear, and the honest answer is that fantasy patterns respond to life circumstances, relationships, and available opportunities in ways that make long-term generalisations difficult.
Is it normal to have unusual fantasies?
Statistical normality in this territory is much broader than most adults assume. UK-inclusive research consistently finds that categories described in popular writing as “unusual” or “kinky” are reported by substantial minorities of adults across the general population, and the boundary between “common” and “unusual” fantasy content is much fuzzier than the labels suggest.
The important qualification: statistical normality of a fantasy content is not the same as endorsement of any real-world behaviour it might describe. The line between fantasy and conduct matters, and adults who cross it in ways that involve non-consenting people are not doing something the fantasy research validates. Imagination is one thing. What people actually do to each other is a separate conversation.
Talking to a partner about fantasies
The framing that tends to work: sharing a fantasy is not the same as requesting it. Curiosity is a better starting point than judgement. Discussion does not commit either party to anything, and a fantasy can remain a fantasy indefinitely without either partner needing to do anything about it. Adults who develop this kind of conversation in their relationships often report that it deepens the connection independently of what they end up choosing to try or not try in real life.
The most common questions about fantasies, answered
What are the most common sexual fantasies in the UK?
UK research consistently reports high frequencies for fantasies involving people other than a current partner, group sex, romantic or emotionally intense scenarios, dominance and submission, roleplay, and various forms of consensual exhibitionist or voyeuristic content. There is no single official ranking. Different studies produce different orderings depending on how they measure and who they sample.
Is it normal to have sexual fantasies?
Sexual fantasy appears to be near-universal among adults. UK-inclusive research finds that the vast majority of adults report regular sexual fantasies, and the range of content those fantasies cover is much wider than mainstream conversation suggests.
Does having a sexual fantasy mean you want to do it?
No. The gap between fantasy content and behavioural intention is one of the clearer findings in the research literature. Adults regularly fantasise about things they have no interest in doing in real life, and the imagined version is often recognisably different from the actual version.
Are kinky fantasies common in the UK?
Substantially more common than the mainstream conversation acknowledges. UK-inclusive research on paraphilic interests, including the King’s College London inventory work, has found meaningful minorities of adults reporting interests in dominance and submission, restraint, roleplay, and various fetish-focused content.
Are Londoners more likely to have unusual sexual fantasies?
Probably not, but they are more likely to find a community organised around a particular interest. London hosts more visible sexual subcultures than other UK cities, but visibility and community size are not the same thing as prevalence in the general population.
Sources
- Kahr, B. (2007). Sex and the Psyche. Allen Lane. (British Sexual Fantasy Research Project findings, approximately 19,000 UK-collected fantasy reports.)
- Brown, A., Barker, E. D., & Rahman, Q. (2020). A systematic scoping review of the prevalence, etiological, psychological, and interpersonal factors associated with BDSM. Journal of Sex Research, 57(6), 781-811. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31617765/
- Brown, A., Barker, E. D., Friedrich, S., & Rahman, Q. (2026). A Survey of the United Kink-dom. Journal of Sex Research. (UK-focused kink interests survey; consult the current issue for volume and page numbers.)
- Wilson, G. D., & Lang, R. J. (1981). Sex differences in sexual fantasy patterns. Personality and Individual Differences, 2(4), 343-346. (Classic small-sample London study identifying four fantasy factors.) https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(81)90093-3
- Natsal-3: Mercer, C. H., et al. (2013). Changes in sexual attitudes and lifestyles in Britain through the life course. The Lancet, 382(9907), 1781-1794. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)62035-8/fulltext
- Joyal, C. C., & Carpentier, J. (2017). The prevalence of paraphilic interests and behaviors in the general population. Journal of Sex Research, 54(2), 161-171. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26241201/
- Featured image: www.pornpics.com/galleries/nuns-play-wearing-latex/ .