[This post is a request made by Cliff Pervocracy. One person who backs me on Patreon at the $5 level or above will be randomly selected each month to pick a topic for a post or story I write.]
[content warning: murder fantasies, rape fantasies]
Is it okay to fantasize about killing your boss?
It’s definitely not okay to start researching how to get a gun license and tracking your boss’s schedule to find out when he’ll be alone. That is not fantasizing but, in fact, what is technically called “planning”.
It’s probably not okay to deep in your heart of hearts want to kill your boss, to think it would be a very good thing if he were dead and very satisfying to watch his blood spurt over your hands, and if you had a ring of invisibility you would stab him and watch him die. That is also not fantasizing; it is instead “desiring”. It is not as bad as actually planning to kill your boss, but it’s still not a very good state of affairs, and you should probably think about treating your burnout or moving to a different office.
But what if you just get chewed out by your boss, and as you sit down at your desk you think “what if I stabbed him with that pretentious gold pen he has on his desk. man, if only”– but if anybody offered you the opportunity, you’d turn it down? I mean, he has kids, and he’s a pretty reasonable guy all things considered even if he was unfair today. You wouldn’t actually want to kill him.
That’s fine, it’s normal, and everyone does it.
Maybe not about bosses in particular. Maybe it’s your ex-boyfriend, or your abusive mom, or that asshole who doesn’t know how to drive. Maybe you’re a free-speech absolutist who kind of wishes Nazis would get punched in the face. Maybe you’re not particularly prone to the sin of wrath– some people aren’t– and instead you fantasize about laying in bed all day (even though in reality that’s kind of boring) or eating 24 donuts (even though that would make you sick) or having your neighbor’s fancy car (even though you know it would stop being attractive as soon as you actually own one).
The thing about fantasies is that, in fantasies, you usually only focus on the desirable part and abstract away the parts that make the reality horrifying. You think about the good parts of murdering your boss: you don’t have to put up with that asshole anymore, and you would wreak vengeance for the injustice done you. You don’t think about the grief of your boss’s family, or your husband sobbing as visitor hours at the prison end and he won’t be able to see you for another week, or your tremendous guilt at violating your moral beliefs about murder, or the fact that there’d be a human life, a little world, forever gone.
Or think about the zombie apocalypse. Lots of people enjoy fantasizing about the zombie apocalypse. Some people like thinking about shooting zombies with their arsenals of weaponry, personally I like thinking about the details of crop rotation, whatever floats your boat. But notably I have never met anyone whose fantasies include “everyone I know and love would be dead.” Or “I would suffer crippling PTSD.” Or “no one would ever make a Star Wars movie again.” Or “I would probably not be a stone-cold badass, actually, I would probably get chewed on by a zombie while I was taking a shit and die thirty minutes into the apocalypse.”
This is why fantasies about the zombie apocalypse are cool, and the actual zombie apocalypse would be terrible.
But of course people don’t usually feel guilt about their fantasies about the zombie apocalypse or boss murder. No, this guilt is usually reserved for sexual fantasies.
All of the same arguments apply. There are lots of happily monogamously married women who sometimes fantasize about fucking a cute stranger they pass on the street. These fantasies notably do not include “my wife, whom I love more than life, feels crushed and betrayed that I cheated on her”, or “I broke my promise, which goes against everything I hold dear”, or “sex with random strangers is often really bad”, or “the random stranger might have an STI or get me pregnant or assault me”, or “I don’t actually want sex with strangers, it takes me some time to get comfortable with someone before I want to have sex with them”. It is totally consistent to have sexual fantasies about cheating and not actually want to cheat.
And similarly for other sorts of sexual fantasies. I sometimes see the argument that rape fantasies are actually ravishment fantasies, because in many such fantasies the victim actually wants sex. This argument has always seemed problematic to me (in real life, if someone says “no” but is aroused by the sex anyway, it’s still rape) and anyway I don’t know about you but I definitely don’t only have fantasies about attractive men having sex with women who say “no” but are secretly enthusiastic. My rape fantasies have actual rape in them.
But having a rape fantasy doesn’t mean you actually want to rape anyone or be raped, any more than making a zombie plan means you want all your friends to die. It is totally consistent to be sexually aroused by the thought of raping someone and to actually have moral objections to causing people years of emotional trauma and pain, such that actual rape is repulsive to you.
There are two special circumstances I want to talk about. First, sometimes having fantasies makes you want to do the thing more than you would otherwise. For instance, some recovering alcoholics find fantasizing about beer makes them want to drink, and some people who cheat on their partners find that sexual fantasies about people other than their spouses make them want to cheat. It makes sense that that would happen: fantasizing makes the good parts more salient than the bad parts. In that case, it can be helpful to explicitly remember the bad aspects. For instance, it’s fun to drink and makes you feel less anxious, and also last time you went on a bender you lost your job. Sex with the cute girl would feel really good, and it would break your wife’s heart.
Second, sometimes people don’t want to have close relationships with people who have certain fantasies. I think there’s a certain level of emotional intimacy required before that’s a reasonable request: your boss doesn’t get to request that you don’t have murder fantasies about him, no matter how much he’d like it. But it’s okay for someone to prefer that their romantic partner not have sexual fantasies about anyone else or that their friend not fantasize about killing them when they’re pissed off. If you have those fantasies anyway, you can try to stop (if that’s something that’s pretty easy for you to do, or if the relationship is worth it), or you can choose to end the relationship.
Thing of Things 
I agree that having fantasies, as you describe, is generally not bad, but I would like to note that sometimes they can be an indicator of bad things (for some definition of bad; I don’t think it’s particularly tied to one). For example, fantasizing about killing your boss isn’t a good sign for the health of the employer-employee relationship, even if you would never act on that fantasy. Assuming that you value that relationship and want it to improve, you want things which will reduce the rate of this fantasy.
And not all enjoyable parts of a fantasy are good. Perhaps you fantasize about killing your boss and, because you dislike how their partner was rude to you at the office party, include their suffering in your fantasy, visualizing them feeling the same powerless anger and fear that you did after they took the last piece of garlic bread off your plate, knowing that you couldn’t do anything about it and that the communal tray had just been exhausted. Is this still a good fantasy? I do not think it is morally reprehensible, but once again only indicative of other undesirable mental phenomena (perhaps you do not wish to have a good relationship with your boss’s partner because you do not wish to have any relationship with your boss’s partner), specifically holding on to a potentially unpleasant degree of resentment (distinct from a sensible and non-distressing aversion to sitting next to them at dinner). Not all fantasies simply gloss over the victims, but that’s OK.
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I largely disagree with this post because of the caveat you noted: “Sometimes having fantasies makes you want to do the thing more than you would otherwise.” I think that’s very often the case, even if we might not admit it to ourselves. In the case of a zombie apocalypse, that’s probably harmless – especially when fantasizing about being a survivor rather than the scientist who makes the zombie virus in the first place. Even in the case of murdering someone, our cultural mores against murder will probably make sure it never comes to action.
But for things like “spending all too much money at the casino next door,” or “having sex with Attractive Person even though it’d be contrary to my moral beliefs,” or “spending the evening at a bar rather than working on my very important paper due tomorrow…” IMO, those things are far too plausible, and thus far too dangerous, to fantasize about.
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Yeah, can’t agree with you there. There’s non-trivial evidence seeming to support the equally plausible theory that fantasizing can substitute for bad behavior rather than encouraging it.
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You can both be right. It’s possible (and seems to me to be the case) that 1) trying to deny yourself the right to fantasize by saying “No! That’s bad!” and cutting it short leads to bad outcomes because you don’t get the chance to notice how the fantasy wouldn’t actually be fulfilling in real life, 2) that indulging in these kinds of fantasies under the pretense that “There’s nothing wrong with fantasizing, it’s just fantasy!” leads towards actually doing the thing fantasized about because you’re turning down your opportunity to notice the bad, and that 3) the best thing to do is to allow yourself to fantasize as long as you want, but to know that it’s a bad sign and to remember all the reasons it would be terrible for your fantasy to come true.
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“But for things like […] having sex with Attractive Person even though it’d be contrary to my moral beliefs, […] those things are far too plausible, and thus far too dangerous, to fantasize about.”
Hmmm, in my own experience having lots of inappropriate fantasies you keep to yourself hasn’t proven to be a very effective way of getting laid…
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“If you have those fantasies anyway, you can try to stop”
For the next minute, don’t think of an elephant. Actually, elephants in general are fine, I just don’t want you to think about an elephant in a pink tutu dancing ballet. Don’t picture it even for a second. That should be pretty easy, right? Now don’t think about your hottest co-worker naked.
To make a more serious point, I suspect people experience varying degrees of volition here but I don’t know anyone entirely in control of their thoughts. For my own part, I have ADHD. My mind has a mind of its own. I daydream a lot, and since puberty those daydreams have often been about sex. Partially due to my religious upbringing I felt quite guilty about them for years and made a concerted, but unsuccessful, effort to stop. Since then I have made peace with the fact that this is something my brain does. I’m also told that this is actually the experience of most men so maybe my daydreams, or at least the sex ones, have nothing to do with ADHD.
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I can do all of that pretty easily, actually.
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At high doses, Adderall mostly gets rid of the fantasies (and sleep, unfortunately). Not sure if that means ADHD was causing them/my inability to control them or if that’s just due to a side effect being reduced libido.
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I think Ozy covered that, in saying ‘if that’s something that’s pretty easy for you to do, or if the relationship is worth it’. I couldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t be willing to for a number of reasons, including that I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who desired that level of control over shit that does on inside my head.
Incidentally I also have ADHD. And while I’m a cis woman, I have personality traits, including a lot of how my sex drive works, that seem to be closer to the male average than the female average. Those things might be a factor, but actually I think it’s just as likely that ‘controlling what you daydream about’ is just a thing some people can do to varying degrees and some people basically can’t. Getting treatment (Elvanse) means I have better control of when and how much I daydream/fantasise, but it hasn’t made me not do it or not want to do it. I can’t speak to whether it would help me to not have depraved sexual fantasies because I have no desire to stop having depraved sexual fantasies, so I haven’t tried. I’m just better at going ‘yes, okay, [horrible illegal sex fantasy] would be awesome, but I will think about that later because I have stuff to do now.’
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I only have murder fantasies when I deep down in my heart of hearts desire that person’s suffering and death. I don’t know if this is typical or not, but I imagine that people like me, and people who don’t have murder fantasies at all, might not see the distinction between them. (I have passing thoughts about murder which I don’t endorse, but I don’t really consider these to be fantasies.)
I think fantasies, desire, and planning are all in the same category. They’re bad if they actually lead to you hurting someone, or if you make someone uncomfortable by letting them find out about them, but otherwise they’re fine. I think they all generally increase the probability that you will actually hurt someone, but usually by a small amount, and you have to balance that against what you get out of the fantasy and how hard it would be to stop.
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I happened to watch this video just before reading this post, which is a crazy coincidence! Warning: it depicts graphic violence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9a1C1qXHfM
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