August 21, 2026:

Play in the bedroom helps us process life and prioritize ourselves—alone or with a partner.

I recently spent an evening in Denver with the intrepid Rewire News Group team as the resident sexpert at the newsroom’s summer Repro Fund-Rager. I ran a “kink-ing booth”—our twist on the traditional kissing booth. Party guests took my five-question quiz, and I assigned them new kinks to explore based on the results.

Think of it like the adult version of Lucy’s 5-cent therapy window. 

The questions were designed to help me gauge pain tolerance, relationship to authority figures, astrological signs, and tolerance for the taboo. This is all valuable information when considering whether someone would enjoy experimenting with spanking or piss play.

Relationships to kink ran the gamut. I suggested that a career pup take their play to the next level with a gimp suit and told an experienced married kinkster to introduce electroshock play into their already roleplay-heavy sex life. I had a lot of fun with the brave-yet-inexperienced tenderfoots as well; for instance, I advised one woman to explore impact play by asking her partner to gently tap her face during oral sex instead of jumping straight to slapping. 

(Read more: BDSM: A Beginner’s Guide to Kink and Erotic Violence)

The kinking booth was envisioned as a lighthearted, sex-positive party game. But the exercise turned out to be much deeper than anyone expected.

“I forgot I liked that”

As I got to know the people who came to my booth, I found that many of them were in the early, wet-and-messy stage of recent life change. How much someone resonated with any given kink seemed correlated with the phase of life they found themselves in. 

I heard two common refrains: I forgot that I liked that, and I’ve always wanted to try that but I’m scared, or I didn’t know how to. 

For many visitors entering midlife, sex had become less of a priority. They were spending more time and energy advancing their career, raising kids, taking care of aging parents, and other exhausting tasks of adulting. It’s not that sex had become less important per se, but, as I heard repeatedly, there was simply less energy to put toward kinky sexperiments.

As for the people in long-term relationships, it wasn’t even that the bedroom had gone dormant, but that familiarity and intimacy over a long period of time meant that these couples could hit the classics, so to speak. They know what works, and that’s what they stick to. As a result, for many of the people I talked to, sex has become sort of perfunctory. 

When I met with these life-tired guests, the kinks I assigned them were often ones they already knew they liked or had experimented with in the past but had since abandoned—like an old hobby they don’t have time for anymore. 

For instance, I assigned one fun-loving, travel-happy Sagittarius in a long-term relationship some exhibitionist sex in spaces like public restrooms and the unpopulated parts of the nearby woods. I truly feel that prioritizing your own pleasure and excitement is a great strategy for longevity. 

Elaborate coitus may feel like a selfish choice during a phase of life that demands so much of you. But in my opinion, the best way to avoid burnout is to actively carve out time for adventure, orgasms, and refilling the emotional well. 

Plus, kink is a great way to introduce play back into your life. Research shows that play is healthy and important for adults. As the National Institute for Play says, repeated play can “strengthen neural connections involved in movement, emotional regulation, social competence, and flexible thinking.” 

Breakups, new jobs, and changing sexual identities

For other valiant would-be kinksters, it wasn’t the monotony of routine that pushed them to seek out a new kink but the unfamiliarity of a major upheaval. Some folks were going through major relationship breakups and career changes, others found themselves at the end of one life phase, preparing to take the next big step. 

For example, I met one shy, transmasculine Libra just getting started in their post-college life who was seeking new, queer-affirming sexual activity after a lifetime of ignoring their sexual side completely. My advice: Purchase a blindfold and handcuffs, and look for mentors at their local BDSM dungeon to show them the ropes.

I met a Scorpio who had recently taken a vow of celibacy after a row of bad breakups and intense relationships. She wasn’t sure if abstaining from masturbation should be included in this vow, and I insisted that she should definitely continue touching herself. I prescribed her a couple of sessions of blindfolded, psychedelic, mindful masturbation so that she could fortify her own embodiment.

People in this category had already broken free of their old patterns—willingly or unwillingly. They wanted to find new aspects of themselves that had yet to be explored and deepen their understanding of their own desire. 

Adults need more play

I realized early on in the night that what I expected to be kind of silly and lighthearted party game actually required me to develop a serious level of intimacy with my visitors. 

Sure, I could have pretended to be the perverted version of a Magic 8-Ball and told everyone to explore new kinks at random, but I wanted to point people in the right direction. I wanted to give everyone the best chance to actually experiment in a way that was both exciting and emotionally sound. I didn’t want to just tell a sex noob to get into a vacuum bed or a wise kinkster to try this little thing called spanking.

In hindsight, I should have expected that these exchanges would feel deep and poignant for all involved. After all, I wrote at length in my 2024 book, How to Fuck Like a Girl, about finding my own identity as a trans woman through roleplaying with strangers I met on Craigslist.

It was through weird and kinky sex that I discovered myself. 

While sadomasochism was once considered a mental illness, modern research indicates that kink and BDSM practices can be good for your mental health. There’s evidence that BDSM-centered play in the bedroom lowers cortisol levels and contributes to an overall more positive outlook on life.

Prioritizing, or in some cases reprioritizing, kink and sex may sound frivolous when it seems like every day a new AI company threatens to burn up all our fresh water, but I believe that it is a great way to prioritize your relationship to yourself. Committing to the discovery of new sensations, new feelings, and the adventure of kink can be a way to keep life feeling electric and make sure your engine purrs through all the phases of life—soft or hard as they may be.

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