Sexy Dreams Are No Rarity

But men and women imagine different lusty scenarios, researcher notes.

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter
Thursday, June 14, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, June 14 (HealthDay News) -- If your dreams are hot enough to burn the sheets, you've got company.

A new Canadian survey, apparently the first of its kind in four decades, reports that 8 percent of dreams swirl around sexual situations.

Men are much more likely to have fantasies about sex with imaginary people, while women prefer current or past sexual partners and celebrities.

Women, meanwhile, report about as many sex dreams as men, a sharp contrast with previous research from the 1960s. "Men used to report many more sex dreams, twice as many as women, and we don't find that difference anymore," said study author Antonio Zadra, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Montreal. "Either women are having them more, or they're more likely to report them. Either way, it's interesting."

According to Zadra, researchers have devoted very little attention to the study of sex dreams, even though they are extremely common.

In his study, Zadra looked at surveys of 109 women and 64 men who compiled diaries of their dreams for as long as a month. The total number of dreams topped 3,500.

The Canadian participants, aged 20-89, responded to advertisements about the survey. Researchers didn't gather data about their sexual orientations.

Zadra was to report his findings Thursday at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies annual meeting, in Minneapolis.

Sex dreams were occasionally productive: Four percent of sex dreams among both men and women resulted in orgasms. Both genders were most likely to dream about sexual intercourse, followed by sexual propositions -- such as flirting -- and kissing, fantasies and masturbation.

In women, a whopping 18 percent of sex dreams involved unwanted sex; the number was 5 percent among the men.

Fantasies about celebrities made up 9 percent of sex dreams among women and 5 percent among men.

Men were much more likely to dream about having sex with more than one person. However, none of the men reported dreams about intercourse in which their partner had an orgasm; 4 percent of women's dreams featured a partner having an orgasm.