'I once had a sex dream about Norman Tebbit.’ I can’t tell you which female member of my family admitted to pillow fantasies about the former Tory minister – now a whiskery 88-year-old – while we sat in the pub one evening, but I laughed so hard I thought I might die. Once I’d regained control of myself, the three of us discussed sex dreams in further detail. About who else we’d slept with in our dreams (my sister said Ed Miliband; I’ve gone there with Gordon Ramsay), what these dreams could mean and how one can be having a lovely, sexy dream about someone and wake up just as you’re, ahem, on the brink of things. Annoying, that.
Wet dreams are often sniggered at as the preserve of teenage boys. But this is unfair. According to a new study by the University of Freiburg in Germany, women are having triple the amount of sex dreams as 50 years ago. In fact, 16-to-30-year-old women now almost match men of the same age in how much time they spend in the land of erotic nod. ‘One might speculate that younger women in modern society deal with sexuality more openly than older women of previous generations,’ researchers concluded. But how does Norman Tebbit fit into all this?
Victorian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud declared that dreams were about the fulfilment of repressed desires, where an umbrella would represent a penis, or a suitcase the vagina. Hmmm. These days, experts have largely decided that, actually, while sex dreams point to a healthy libido, they don’t necessarily mean anything about your sexual preferences. Instead, the 18% of our dreams that we all dedicate to ‘doing bits’ serve as pointers for what might be lacking in our life, explains Theresa Cheung, dream expert and author of The Dream Dictionary. Which could mean something lacking in your current relationship, or even qualities your subconscious feels are lacking within you. This, Theresa adds, is very common when it comes to having such dreams about someone of the same sex, even though you believe yourself to be straight. This happens to me on a semi-regular basis, and I wake up wondering if I’ve made all the wrong choices in life. Not at all, says Theresa.
‘The interpretation of this dream lies in what the woman in your dreams represents to you. What qualities does she possess that you feel you need? Is she clever, caring, ambitious, kind, assertive and so on?’
There’s no ‘normal’ when it comes to erotic dreams, says Dr Clare Johnson, president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. ‘Just as we each have different libidos, we have a varying amount of erotic dreams. It also depends on our current sex life – if we’re going through a dry spell, the body may compensate by producing more sexual dreams.’ Pregnancy can be a particularly fertile time, too. Donald Trump, Michael Gove, ‘erotic physiotherapy sessions with Gary Lineker’ and Ant and Dec ‘at the same time’ are all reported on a thriving thread online about the topic. ‘Sandi Toksvig, she was amazing,’ adds another. Just remember that you don’t necessarily want to have it off with that celebrity in real life, counsels Theresa: it’s about what they represent. ‘For example, if you dream of having sex with a politician, you may want more authority to govern your own life.'
Our monthly cycles also cause fluctuations in levels of night-time sexiness. In the first two weeks, we’re more likely to have upbeat sex dreams due to rising hormone levels; in the second two, they might be more intense or unsettling as hormone levels settle again. Unsettling being the operative word, in some cases. I quiz various girlfriends on the subject and some of them blush. Laughing about our fantasies over a bottle of wine is one thing, but sex dreams can be far stranger than fantasies.
All right, I’ll stick my hand up and admit I once had a sex dream about a male member of my family (although I can’t reveal which one because I’d have to emigrate to the moon). But you get the point. Sex dreams can be disturbing. What kind of sicko dreams about that, you think, waking up from something that felt real. ‘You’ve been watching too much Game Of Thrones,’ jokes Theresa. ‘Seriously, though, dreams about having sex with relatives are not about you being aroused by them sexually, but something about that relative and what they represent. What aspects of their lives or personalities can you learn from or need to incorporate within yourself to grow? Such dreams are entirely normal.’ Perfect. I’ll sleep much better knowing that.