Don't Even Think About It: The Role of Sexual Fantasies as Perceived Unfaithfulness in Heterosexual Dating Relationships

We examined the relationship of the context and the target of fantasies on college students' ratings of unfaithfulness and reactions of jealousy to the fantasies of a dating partner. Participants also rated how unfaithful they thought their own fantasies were and reported feelings of guilt that may have been present. We found that men and women rated the sexual fantasies of a dating partner as highly unfaithful and jealousy provoking, and those ratings were moderated by the target of a partner's fantasy. The more likely it was that the person about whom a dating partner was fantasizing could disrupt the primary relationship, the higher the unfaithfulness and jealousy ratings. Similarly, participants' ratings of how unfaithful their own fantasies were, and how guilty they felt in response to having had sexual fantasies, were also positively related to how likely it was that the person about whom they were fantasizing could disrupt the relationship. The context of both the participants' and their partners' fantasies was only moderately related to the dependent measures.