Sex can be amazing. But just like if you ate the world’s most delicious cake for every meal, every day, the novelty and excitement would eventually wear off. You’d be tired of cake. If you’re finding that with your sex life, it might be time to infuse a bit of extra fun. We can easily do that with these 10 suggestions to ease yourself into kinkier sex – even if you’re not a kinky person to begin with!
From easiest to hardest, these options can add some “oomph” into your sex life with “kinky” stuff that goes nowhere near the dungeon-clad activities you’ve seen in crime TV shows.
Try Eye Contact
Eye contact? How kinky! But really, if you haven’t tried maintaining eye contact before, it can feel impressively difficult and deliciously intimate. To ease yourself into it, simply think about looking at the bridge of their nose. If that doesn’t feel too terrifying, try to look into their left (or right) eye.
You can do this while sitting across from one another, holding hands, to start. As you get more comfortable, maintaining eye contact during sexual play (like a blowjob or while licking a nipple) can up the intensity of the entire act.
(If you’re over the age of 40, you might need to add some space between the two of you to maintain eye contact. Too-close eye contact on older eyes can give you a headache, and I don’t think that’s what you’re after!)
Explore Flavored Lubricants
If you haven’t tried lube before, start there. Lube adds slickness to everything – from blowjobs to handjobs to penetration. Everything feels more “wet” when you add lube.
For those who already love their lubes, consider adding flavored lubricants instead. While you probably won’t notice the flavor for penis-in-vagina sex, you would notice it if you’re doing anything oral with the lube.
If you want to add a bit of giggling, you can also dip a finger into a small dollop of lube (a sushi soy plate is great for this!). Use that finger on your partner’s skin to write out a word, and follow that depiction with your tongue to really enjoy the taste of the lube you chose.
For those with a larger budget, consider picking up multiple lube flavors. One partner can smear a bit of a lube somewhere on their body and request their lover give it a lick. The lover’s job is then to guess what flavor it was. Rinse and repeat, directing your partner’s taste testing to any areas that need extra attention. ;)
Watch a Movie with Erotic Overtones
It’s super uncomfortable to watch a movie with a sex scene in it with your parents, but that’s less of a problem with your lover.
Next time movie night is happening, intentionally select a movie that has erotic overtones. How erotic you want to go is entirely up to you. If you’re both intrigued by the idea of kink but uncomfortable actually trying it, select a kinky movie. If you’re turned off by kink, you can pick a TV show with erotic overtones (like Bridgerton, Game of Thrones, or Outlander) that isn’t necessarily kinky.
Seeing different ways to have sex, and viewing them often enough that they become a little bit more of the “norm” for you via media viewing, can help you feel more comfortable trying kinkier things for yourself in the bedroom.
Consider a Nuru Massage
If you’ve ever thought the idea of “Jello Wrestling” would be hot, you’ve basically discovered the premise behind a Nuru Massage. In it, you both coat yourselves in a thin layer of slippery lube, and you rub your naked bodies up against one another.
It’s hot AF. If you’ve never orgasmed just from sliding up against a partner’s naked body, you’re in for a treat.
Presumably, you’re going to do this at home. If so, you’ll want a Nuru Massage Mat (usually a PVC sheet with inflatable sides to contain the mess) as well as Nuru Massage Powder (add water, and you end up with lube!) I recommend doing this near-ish the shower, but it’s not as messy (or as staining) as paint or food products would be. Just towel off the bottoms of your feet before walking across your home, and you’ll have minimal mess.
Opt for a Blindfold
Despite being so approachable, blindfolds are kinda the “gateway” to BDSM gear. If you find that you have a great time with blindfolds, it can be less terrifying to try other kinky gear.
Blindfolds really are a great workhorse to ease yourself into kinkier sex, though. If your hands are free, they can be removed in seconds. If the idea of having one on makes you uncomfortable, you can always experiment with simply closing your eyes to get a “preview” of how a blindfold will feel.
Once on, blindfolds tend to enhance all of the sensations you’re already feeling. With your sense of sight “gone”, your other senses amp up, making each touch and sound more impactful than if you were staring at your lover the entire time. Closing your eyes provides some of this, but your brain knows it can always open them and look. Instead, with a blindfold, standard foreplay can be re-electrified as you have to “imagine” what they look like to match the sensations to what they’re doing to your body.
Generally, only one person wears a blindfold at a time. The blindfolded person becomes the center of attention. If you want to get really creative, both of you wearing a blindfold at the same time can be fun. It’ll lead to a lot more laughs as the two of you struggle to do some things, but sometimes, giggling sex is the best sex.
Read an Erotic-ish Book Separately
New inspiration can be hard to come by if you are both only looking to one another. Instead, consider reading an erotic (ish) book at the same time, separately. It’s like a sexy little book club!
Unlike movies, where sexier and kinkier movies can be hard to come by, there are hundreds of thousands of e-books with erotic overtones. You just have to decide how sexy you want to get, what niche you want to read in, and how long you want the book to be.
Mind you, I’m not saying you have to go straight for erotica. If someone isn’t comfortable with that much explicit sex, erotica may be a step backwards; it might feel too much like porn.
However, if you’re trying to ease yourself into kinkier sex, there are tons of e-book novels with full plots and stories that happen to have some sexier interludes that don’t automatically cut to black. These novels can be a bit more approachable for people who are uncomfortable with porn; understanding the backstory and character motivation can make the sex scenes feel more natural and less “forced”.
Once you both pick one, you can agree to a future deadline (most erotic-ish e-books are pretty easy to finish within a month). You don’t have to have a full book club discussion, but this can be a fun way to check-in on one another (“Has she left the island yet?” or things like “Oooooh, I can’t believe she won’t just tell him the truth!”)
Again, repeated exposure to kinky things, in a consensual, everyone-having-fun environment, can really help you become more comfortable with kinky sex in your own life.
Consider Mutual Masturbation
Have you tried touching yourself in front of your partner? Putting on a show – and getting to watch a show! – can be hot AF.
That being said, it can also be terrifying to be on display. If you’re in the “holyshit that’s scary” camp, there are a few things we can do to slowly make it more comfortable:
- Try mutual masturbation with the lights off. While the “show” won’t be as easy to see, it can be a slow progress to doing it with more light. Over multiple sessions, use a lamp (or a dimming light) to slowly increase the available light in the room.
- Put on a blindfold. Using our tip from above, if you’re terrified of seeing their reaction but okay with your body on display, you might consider wearing a blindfold. This can drastically reduce how self-conscious you feel!
- Wear some clothing or lingerie that covers your worry spots. Are you only worried about how a specific spot on your body will look? The tummy or upper arms are common ones. If so, wear some lingerie or clothing that covers up that spot. You can still have some of your skin on display, but you won’t have to worry about what your “problem areas” look like naked. Hopefully, with time and lots of lover salivation over your naked skin, this will become less of a worry.
Go Back to Dry Humping
When’s the last time you didn’t go for “home base”? As we get used to having sex, we tend to, y’know, always end in intercourse.
Instead, if you’re open to it, consider going back to the foreplay days where the intercourse wasn’t automatically on the table.
If you’re finding it difficult to “resist” old habits, consider starting (or attempting to finish!) your foreplay somewhere new or public. For example, if you’ve rented a cabin with a semi-private hot tub, you can go from kissing to dry humping to orgasm without being too obvious about it. If you don’t have the time to be renting a cabin, you can try to replicate some of the same results by having sex in a new place. You probably default to usual habits once you lay in bed, but what happens if foreplay starts while one of you sits on the kitchen counter or floor?
Try Mental Bondage
Sure, you’ve seen bondage and restraint with cuffs, but there’s also something called “mental bondage”. Essentially, it means that you command your partner to stay still, or else there’s a negative consequence involved.
If someone is nervous about wearing cuffs or finds it a turn off to play with bondage gear, this can be a much-more-approachable option. Since your “voice” is the only thing holding them there, they can escape if need be, but in the meantime, you both can have some fun, back-and-forth playful comments about it.
For example:
- You command your partner to grip their hand onto the headboard. If they move their hand, you stop giving them a titjob.
- In doggy style sex, you tell your partner to place their nipples onto the bed, really enhancing that back arch for your view. If they move their breasts away, you give them a playful swat on the butt.
- You tell your lover to stay still during a massage as they continually try to get up because they have chores to do.
- While your lover is stirring tonight’s dinner on the stove, you slide a hand into their pants and pleasure them with your fingers. If they stop stirring because they get distracted, you “tsk tsk” in their ear and stop what you’re doing with your hands. You playfully let them know they better not burn dinner, and you only resume once they start stirring dinner again.
There’s more information about mental bondage here.
Explore a Couple’s Vibrator
Some people can find sex toys uncomfortable in the bedroom. They can feel like a “replacement” or like a competitor for your sexual attention. Instead of using a sex toy that focuses on either one of you, this way to ease yourself into kinkier sex is done with a couple’s vibrator.
A couple’s vibrator is a type of sex toy that’s designed to work with both of your bodies simultaneously. There are generally two different types of couple’s vibrators:
A Universal Vibrator: These toys have unique designs crafted to pleasure clitoral, vaginal, or penis anatomy. They aren’t designed to do it all at the same time, but they’re designed to pleasure any of those spots when you pick it up. See how the Satisfyer Endless Love, shown below, has a rounded shape for shafts while simultaneously maintaining two vibrating tips that could surround a clitoris? This universal design lets you both explore one another’s bodies with the same toy, passing it back and forth.
A Simultaneous Experience: These types of couples’ vibrators, like the We-Vibe Chorus (shown below), are designed to be used for simultaneous pleasure. One end of the vibrator slides into the vagina while the other end stays outside of the body, pressing up against the clitoris. The insertable end is thinner, allowing a penis to slide in alongside the vibrator. These vibrators can pleasure both partners at once, ensuring the toy is designed for dual pleasure so no one feels left out or competed with.
Updated: July 2026.
