New Year, New Pleasure: 6 Ways to Upgrade Your Sex Life in 2026

New year, same body, but a whole new opportunity to bring more presence, intention, and alignment into how you experience pleasure. 

As a sexologist, I can tell you this: great sex isn’t about performing better, lasting longer, or copying what you saw online. 

Great sex is firstly about deep listening - to your body, to your desires, and to your partner. 

It’s also about awareness, communication, curiosity, and giving yourself permission to feel good, over and over and over again, because it’s so easy to focus solely on our partners in a world that’s taught most of us to people please.

So let’s make 2026 the year you stop settling for “meh” and start choosing more. More honesty, more sensation, more connection, because this of course leads to more pleasure.

Here are six science-backed, pleasure-focused ways to upgrade your sex life this year.

1. Stop Faking Orgasms (Your Pleasure Is Not a Performance)

Let’s start with the big (and most common) shift we can make this year: STOP FAKING ORGASMS. 

If you’re faking orgasms, you’re not being “nice” or “good,” you’re training your partner (and yourself) away from what actually works for you and your body.

From a sexology perspective, orgasms are feedback, not a goal or a signal that sex is over. When you fake orgasms, you remove the data your partner needs to learn about your body, and you further remove yourself from learning about your body. You also teach your nervous system to disconnect pleasure from authenticity, enforcing what we’ve all been taught (especially as women), which is that sex is about performing for the visual pleasure of the other.

Try this instead:

• Replace faking with guiding: “A little slower,” “Right there,” “Can you stay just like that?”

• Normalize not orgasming every time: pleasure does not equal climax, lots of wonderful sex happens where there is a lot of pleasure but no orgasm. That’s okay. 

• Remember: honest, communicative sex is far hotter than polite, performative sex.

2. Understand Your Anatomy (Yes, including your genitals)

It’s really difficult to experience more pleasure when we don’t actually know that much about our bodies, and how our pleasure anatomy actually works. And unfortunately, not so shockingly, many adults still don’t know the basics of their own anatomy when it comes to sex and pleasure.

Case in point: the clitoris isn’t just a button, it’s not just the part you can see (the glans) that peeps out from under the clitoral hood, and contrary to popular belief, going straight for the clitoris in a sexual experience does not help you experience the maximum amount of pleasure. 

The clitoris is a complex internal structure with over 8,000 nerve endings, extending far beyond what you can see. Many orgasms labeled as “vaginal” are actually clitoral orgasms via internal stimulation to the internal structures of the clitoris.

And considering the clitoris wasn’t even actually properly anatomically mapped until Professor Helen O’Connell in 2005, which means there are medical practitioners working today that were working before the clitoris was even properly understood anatomy, it’s no surprise that so many of us don’t actually know what’s going on in this incredible organ designed purely for pleasure. 

This is just one example of how little we often actually know about our pleasure and how to maximize pleasure potential. Similarly, many folks with penises know very little about their pleasure beyond how to ejaculate. 

When you understand your anatomy:

• You stop blaming your body for not responding the way to expect it to

• You learn to ask for what actually feels good 

• You can dismantle the shame that comes with having needs and desires during sex

• You start to explore with intention and curiosity rather than frustration

How to start getting to know your body better

When folks want to start understanding their bodies better, I always suggest to start by actually looking at your genitals with curiosity and intention, to get an actual visual understanding of what your body looks like and how it works in regards to pleasure. 

This practice comes from Sexological Bodywork, and it’s known as Mapping. There are 3 types of mapping we can do: 

• Anatomical Mapping: looking and touching with the intention of learning where the anatomical parts of our genitals are on our body

• Curiosity Mapping: looking and touching with the intention of being curious about what we experience when we touch different parts of our body, without attaching to any certain outcome

• Pleasure Mapping: looking and touching with the intention of using pleasure as our guide for how we touch

It’s best to use a mirror to look at your body for the purpose of genital mapping so you can actually see everything. Clear 20-30 minutes where you won’t be interrupted, make yourself cozy, and then set an intention.

Pro tip: it can be really helpful to have a diagram (of a vulva or penis, depending on your anatomy) like these ones to look at while you map so you can understand what each part is and how it responds to touch. 

Images from American Sexual Health Association

Going in with curiosity, and even a toy can be game-changing here! If you’re Pleasure Mapping, you might bring your favourite toy to the party and see what it’s like to masturbate in the mirror. Get curious about what you could learn!

3. Learn to Communicate (Before, During, and After Sex)

Great sex is not intuitive; it’s collaborative and made possible by communicating and deep listening to one another. Communication isn’t a mood killer, it’s honestly a pleasure enhancer. Your best sexy toy, if you will.

One of my favorite in-the-moment questions is:
“What would make this even better?”

This question comes from Sexological Bodywork, and it’s honestly useful both within and outside of sexual experiences, to help us get curious about how we could add more pleasure to literally any experience. It’s playful, open-ended, and assumes the sex is already good so you don’t have to be too worried about offending, or anyone involved getting defensive. 

By asking this question, you’re simply getting curious about how you could continue increasing pleasure. You might start trying it in non-sexual contexts to get the hang of it. Honestly, try it next time you sit down to eat a meal: “what would make this even better?” Maybe you’d like to add a sauce, or a garnish, or a certain beverage, or change the lighting for the eating experience. 

Some other good questions to get the communication flowing:

• What would feel good for you right now?

• How do you want me to touch you?

• What’s something you’ve never asked me for that you wish I’d do?

• What would make this super hot for you?

• How could you be more comfortable?

• What’s an intention you have for this experience?

Things to communicate outside the bedroom:

• Desires you might have that haven’t been explored

• Boundaries for this particular experience and going forward/in general

• Fantasies you might like to share/explore

• What you don’t want anymore: we’re all always changing, what used to work might just not work anymore and that’s okay!! We get to explore new things!!

Sexual confidence and more pleasure comes from tuning into yourself enough to get a sense of what you actually want, and then practicing sharing it with partners so they can understand your pleasure better. 

4. Redefine Foreplay (It Starts Long Before the Bedroom)

Foreplay does not begin with touching genitals and it definitely doesn’t end with penetration. Foreplay extends well beyond the sexual experience into the entirety of the relationship so there’s more potential for desire to be bubbling more often outside of sex, rather than expecting it to miraculously appear when someone’s initiated sex, or when it’s the time to have sex previously agreed upon.

Foreplay is:

• Flirty texts throughout the day

• Playful touch (booty smack, teasing, hugging from behind etc)

• Feeling emotionally safe

• Shared laughter and being silly together

• Anticipation (sexting, intentional separation, suggestive comments)

• Feeling seen, heard, and desired 

• Intentionally injecting eroticism into daily life

From a physiological standpoint, arousal (especially for vulva owners) often requires time, safety, and mental engagement. When foreplay is rushed or skipped, pleasure suffers. And when foreplay isn’t present until sex has been initiated, it’s often very difficult for many people to get into the headspace immediately. This is why we want a more erotic tone throughout the entire relationship.

Think of foreplay as the environment your sex life lives in, not just the opening act. We want the most erotic environment to live in possible, this will generally support more desire. 

5. Never Too Much Lube (Yes, Really)

Repeat after me: dryness is not a failure. You don’t only need lube if something’s wrong.

Firstly, if there is a feeling of dryness it can make a lot of physiological sense. Arousal, hormones, stress, medication, age, and even condoms affect natural lubrication. If the answer to your question “what would make this even better?” is lube then you’re not giving up and nothing is wrong with you, you’re literally enhancing your experience, and that’s hot. 

Lube is made to enhance pleasure and sensation. Isn’t that enough to want to give it a go? There is no down side to using lube (so long as you’re using the right kind) in any sexual experience, and all it can do is make everyone more comfortable and give more pleasure potential. So why not use it?

More lube means:

• More comfort

• More sensation

• Less friction (and fewer microtears)

• Better orgasms

Pro tip from a sexologist: if you think you’ve used enough lube… add a little more.

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Lube to learn which type is right for you. 

6. Toys Are Your Allies, Not Your Competition

Sex toys are not replacements for partners, they’re tools for pleasure. Pleasure is not a limited resource.

Toys can:

• Help you learn your body faster

• Add stimulation where hands or mouths get tired or can’t reach

• Do things our bodies simply can not do (like vibrate)

• Reduce pressure on partners to “do it all”

• Teach you about your pleasure

• Add multiple sensations at once 

• Give us access to types of sex we might otherwise not have (like using a strap-on for a vulva owner)

• Increase orgasm consistency and overall sexual satisfaction

Bringing toys into partnered sex almost always improves intimacy, because it shifts the focus from performance to experience, and removes any idea that your pleasure should only come from your partner. That thought is soooo out-dated, and in 2026 we’re all about more pleasure and less shame. 

If your partner says “you shouldn’t need toys if you like me” or something along these lines, that’s a sign that a larger conversation about pleasure should probably be had. Your pleasure is not owned by anyone, and if you’re with a supportive, engaged, curious partner, they will want you to experience maximum pleasure and put their ego aside, regardless of where it’s coming from (them, you, or a toy). 

In 2026, let’s officially retire the myth that toys threaten masculinity, femininity, or connection. They simply enhance all three.

Pleasure Is a Skill You Can Practice

Your sex life doesn’t need fixing, most likely what it needs is attention. 

When you stop performing, start communicating, use the right tools, and listen to and honour your body, pleasure becomes more accessible, more reliable, and your entire world becomes more erotic.

So here’s what’s In for 2026:

Curiosity over shame
Honesty over politeness or people-pleasing
Pleasure that is authentic to your body, on your terms

Your body is ready. Are you?