When Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, professional hockey rivals and secret lovers from “Heated Rivalry,” smooched on my TV screen, I screamed with delight. And I have not been the same ever since.
I am usually stone-faced while watching TV shows, but I found myself holding my face and groaning when Shane and Ilya bumped feet under the table, and gasping when Ilya told Shane to keep his glasses on. I kicked my feet when Ilya confessed his love in Russian to Shane. My physical body may be at work, but my spirit is still thinking about the show’s cottage episode on loop.
Since the release of the HBO Max/Crave hit show based on Rachel Reid’s book series, a passionate fanbase has taken over, creating detailed edited music videos, “Gay Hockey Romance Saved My Life” merch, and tattoos of chairs and loons dedicated to the show.
And many of the show’s most passionate fans of this queer hockey romance are women.
Women loving to watch men in love with each other is not new. In fact, there’s a Japanese term called “fujoshi” specifically to describe women who delight in men-loving-men romances.
Academics theorize that women’s desire to see men hook up with each other might be, in part, because women feel psychological safety from watching romances that cannot ever involve them. As one research paper on this subject puts it, women who live under patriarchy’s demands of “female beauty, motherhood, and the reproductive function of sex” try to escape their bodies “by taking refuge in the idealized sphere of male homosexual fantasies.”
In other words, watching men kiss, grind and fall in love with each other can be a refreshing escape from the garbage that comes with being a woman in a society that too often caters to the needs of men.
“People fantasize about and enjoy seeing content that specifically allows them to see or be someone else,” said certified sex therapist Nicoletta von Heidegger. “Sometimes this is because we struggle to connect with our own body, other times it’s because it feels intriguing to imagine being someone else.”
But for Jen Winston, author of “Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much” and fan of “Heated Rivalry,” using Ilya and Shane’s decade-long secret relationship as a blank slate for your desires is not the only reason why so many people like her can’t get enough.
It’s also simply hot. The show puts us in bed with Shane and Ilya. We see them sweat and moan and check in with each other. “People like it because we are attracted to male queerness,” Winston said.
For Winston, bisexuality is an identity that goes beyond the binary of being attracted to men and women. “And the way that my sexuality works is I’m attracted to other people with that mindset and that identity. And it might be that that’s what people are experiencing,” she said.
Many of us want the sex that Ilya and Shane in “Heated Rivalry” are having. Here’s how to get it.
Sammy Peachey, a licensed marriage and family therapist, said the “very good” sex scenes in “Heated Rivalry” also have three qualities that many women are drawn to: a power dynamic ― where Ilya shows up as a soft but powerful dominant while Shane is the excited submissive ― mutual yearning, and building sexual tension.
“The mutual yearning that Shane and Ilya express for each other is also so powerful and something that I believe most people desire to feel from their partners,” Peachey said. “People want to be wanted, and that is something that is on display in this show.”
Shane and Ilya have sex within the first episode, but it takes them the whole show’s season before they can be honest with each other about their love. Before that, there are years of using code names, dating other people and secret hotel trysts. As Shane puts it in a sad post-coital deleted text to Ilya: “We didn’t even kiss.”
“What I think is particular about this show is there’s obstacles,” said Elizabeth Harles, a certified sex therapist. “One of the defining things about erotic energy is interest plus obstacle equals, for many of us, arousal.” She noted that this sense of longing, but also uncertain fear of having one’s desires reciprocated, is relatable to many queer people.
If you can’t stop thinking about Shane and Ilya’s sex life, your subconscious might also be telling you something about yourself.
“It could say you might like the confidence of someone being able to directly say they want you and are attracted to you,” Peachey said. “You might desire some exploration into some power dynamics in your own sex life.”
It could also be a window into a queer life you secretly long for.
“If you are a cis woman, you don’t necessarily have to be a lesbian and attracted to things that you think a lesbian would be attracted to, in order to be queer,” Winston said. Watching the show could help you “see a life outside of hetero-patriarchy that you do wish you could participate in, and that can be true regardless of if you’re a cis woman married to a cis man.”
It’s not just women who may benefit from seeing Ilya, a confident bi man who flaunts tropical shirts and names what he desires without shame. Winston said she is excited about what this means for bi men in real life, who are known to experience discrimination and exclusion in both heterosexual and LGBTQ+ communities. “I’m hoping that this creates a world where bi men feel safer to come out,” Winston said.
There are already women who have convinced their partners to watch the show with them. You could join them. Talking about Shane and Ilya could be an opening you might have been waiting for.
Instead of worrying, “What does this mean about me?” Heidegger encourages moving from judgment to curiosity about what excites you about the show. Ask yourself: “Is it the bodies? Is it the way you imagine the characters feeling? Is it the emotion that it evokes in you?”
You could also explore these desires by yourself. Winston wrote fanfiction after watching “Heated Rivalry” using the show’s characters. This is a type of creative writing Reid herself has done. Reid said in an interview that one of the early drafts of her book “Game Changer,” which “Heated Rivalry” was partly adapted from, was a fanfiction.
“Even if you don’t post it anywhere, just try it. Think of a setting that you think might be fun, because it did help me. I wrote fanfic about the two of them with Svetlana,” Ilya’s close friend and lover, Winston said. “I’ve never personally had a good m-m-f [male-male-female] threesome, so that was the first good one I’ve ever had.”
