10 Ways To Tell Your Partner About Your Kink — So You Can Enjoy It Together

Telling your partner about your kink can be terrifying. While there is no shame in any sexual act between two (or more) consenting adults, kinks and fetishes* can still be stigmatized.

It's normal to feel scared about revealing your kinks — whether you're into role-playing as a doctor and patient, foot fetishes, or gang bangs — but kinks are often deep-rooted in our sexual needs. Failure to disclose yours with your partner can mean you're missing out on a lot of fun and pleasure, and may result in cheating, resentment, and/or breakups due to sexual dissatisfaction. While many of us have sexual fantasies that are fun to masturbate to without involving our partners, kinks demand attention.

"There are people for whom they need to have that fetish involved in their sex play, or they’re not going to enjoy it," says Michael Aaron, PhD, an NYC-based sex therapist and author of Modern Sexuality.

You deserve to get what you want sexually without shame. To help you through the nerves that can accompany telling your partner that the sex is great, but you really need double penetration (or spanking, or bondage, or role-playing) from time to time to truly feel fulfilled, we've compiled 10 tips on how to help you share your kink with your partner.

*The terms "kink" and "fetish" are often used interchangeably, although technically a "fetish" refers to sexual arousal to an inanimate object, while "kink" is umbrella term for pleasure beyond normative penetrative sex.

The gap between what we learned in sex ed and what we're learning through sexual experience is big — way too big. So we're helping to connect those dots by talking about the realities of sex, from how it's done to how to make sure it's consensual, safe, healthy, and pleasurable all at once. Check out more here.