We Asked People in Relationships How Reading Smut Changed Their Sex Lives

Whether you’re like me and go slack-jawed for Shane and Ilya fanfiction, or prefer to feast on the well-hung faeries, dragons, and wizards of romantasy, or get three orgasms deep in the speculative subgenre that is Omegaverse, your love of smut is far from atypical.The core hashtags #SmutTok and #Smut boasts an impressive 4+ billion views and counting, fanfiction emporium AO3 averages around 125 million page views per day, and romance print sales have more than doubled since 2021, with the genre becoming the leading growth category in the entire U.S. print book market in 2025.But even if you’re fully riding (er, reading) the smut train, you might be wondering why the heck so many of us are head-over-heels for smut right now. The short answer is that it's seriously improving your sex lives and general well-being; the longer answer is ahead.Why Smut Is So Hot Right Now To be clear, smut isn’t a particularly new or newly popular subgenre. Still, there are reasons smut may be hitting particularly, ahem, hard right now.For starters, a spicy story is a delicious way to escape whatever fresh hell your real life (or newsfeed) is serving up, Philadelphia-based ASSECT-certified sex therapist and clinical licensed social worker Melanie Greenberg, LCSW, CST, MEd, founder of Pulling Threads Therapy, tells Cosmopolitan.As Greenberg shares, “Starting with fanfiction about Harry and Draco when I was thirteen, smut has been an escape for me,” she says. “These days it remains a way for me to escape into a different world after a long day of helping clients.” Given that helping clients really means helping them navigate a timeline marked by genocide, censorship, climate disaster, and tech-related doom, there is plenty to want to escape from.Smut can also serve as an antidote to stress and its libido-lowering side effects. Stress is one of the top cock blocks for desire because a whoosh of cortisol (the stress hormone) has been shown to signal to the body that it has more pressing matters to attend to than getting horny. Reading smut, then, may offer a two-for-one punch: Research has linked recreational reading with reduced psychological distress, while all those saucy scenes can help get your erotic wheels turning. As Greenberg puts it, “when stress makes engaging in sexual intimacy off the page feel inaccessible, reading about it can be an accessible way into desire.”There can be shame-squashing benefits to reading smut, too, according to Greenberg. “We’re currently in a return to purity culture, which is most apparent in the ways sex is absent from educational programs and people's home lives,” she says. Indeed, just three states (California, Oregon, and Washington) require comprehensive sex education to be taught in all schools, while 38 other states plus D.C. require schools to emphasize abstinence if any sex ed is provided at all.When information about sex is as absent as a safeword is in 50 Shades—or when all the “education” is basically just a lecture series on why you shouldn’t be having it—it can be easy to internalize the idea that sex and wanting it are shameful, she says. Smut, fortunately, offers a counter-narrative.“Reading about desires that mirror your own, and therefore knowing that other people are out there and having those same desires, can make people feel less lonely and less ashamed,” she says. This can be especially true for LGBTQ+ people who may have had even fewer opportunities to see their desires represented positively in the sex education and media they grew up with, she says.And, of course, people also read smut for reasons that have zip, zil, zilch to do with the ongoing fever dream of 2026. “Some people like it because it gives them permission to explore. When you’re reading, it’s just you, yourself, and the words on the page,” which offers a sense of privacy and containment that can make exploring desires that feel new, taboo, or otherwise intimidating feel lower-stakes, says Greenberg.“Other people like it because reading smut opens up their minds to what is possible sexually; it makes them more creative, erotically speaking,” she says. And some readers gravitate toward a smutty scene because it gives them language to introduce into their own sex lives, while others read it because it’s just so gosh-darn fun.9 People Share What Smut Does For Their Sex LivesAll in all, there are practically as many reasons to read smut as there are tags on AO3. (ICYDK, that’s a totally free mecca for just about any of your smutty wants). So, we asked real people what, exactly, they get from reading the spicy stuff. Here’s what they said:1. “It Keeps My Libido Simmering” “As the editor of AURORE Erotica, a space for literary erotica based on our own best experiences, I am always reading erotic submissions. From the beginning I’ve had to do my work for the publication in public, because otherwise I get distracted by how turned on I’d become reading from my “home office” (a.k.a. bed)... and wind up not working. So yeah, reading smut keeps my libido simmering ALL THE TIME.”—Carly, founder of AURORE, 41, New York City2. “It’s Been My Antidote to Purity Culture”“I grew up in a very sheltered evangelical Christian community, steeped in purity culture. Then, in early adulthood, I struggled with vaginismus, so sex was physically painful. I started reading smut in my late twenties when I was married, and had developed a slightly healthier relationship with sex and intimacy. But smut helped me break through what was left of the purity culture mindset that was contributing to some of that pain. Not only did it break down the mental contributors to my vaginismus more than anything else (including therapy), but it also helped me discover that I can have sex for me instead of for someone else or to prove something like that I am a good wife.”—Patricia*, 36, Washington3. “It Helps Me Explore My Sexuality Within My Monogamous Relationship”“I’m married, and in a long-term, monogamous relationship, reading a mix of “spicy” lesbian contemporary romances and lesbian fanfiction every week has very much helped me deepen my relationship with myself, as well as given me room to explore my identities and desires. I’ve thought a lot about my sexuality— for instance, if I’m a lesbian or bisexual or maybe nonbinary—and as I consider all of the above, books have been such a guiding force in helping me sort out what I resonate with and what I gravitate toward. It gives me a way to consider, for example, if I like men or just like mascs and butches.”—Rachel, 33, North Carolina4. “It Gives Me Dirty Talk Ideas” “I’ve learned ideas for dirty talk from reading smut, which I’ve then applied in real life with a partner. Some of these involve niche and specific kinks. For example, in smut you’ll read about a “breeding kink,” including language around the man “releasing his seed inside of her.” I’ve experimented with this language in real-life sex scenarios to see if it felt hot or not. Spoiler: it did. I would never have known about this language—or thought of it on my own—if it weren’t for reading smut containing this kink and dirty talk.”—Allison, founder of smut site Bothered Stories, 42, New York5. “It Let Me Explore Things I Didn’t Think I’d Be Into” “Reading smut has definitely allowed me to test out things I didn’t initially think I'd be into, but I wound up finding erotic after more information and exploration. Most notably, pet play. I now know that being able to turn my brain off, just be a dumb cat/mutt, and trust someone to care for me really appeals to me. And reading about it in smut is what led me to that discovery.”—Ray, 18, North Carolina6. “It Helped Me Feel Safe Exploring My Partner’s Kink”“I had a new partner who liked to play in the space of hypnokink (erotic hypnosis). He sent me hypnokink erotica to help me learn about it, understand what a hypnotic trance sex scene might be like, and get a sense of whether I’d like to try it. Reading stories helped me feel safe exploring this kink and allowed me to see how my body would respond. The result was that I got very intrigued and decided to try it in real life with him.”—Allison, founder of smut site Bothered Stories, 42, New York7. “It Helps Me and My Partner Fantasize Together” “It started with a story he wrote for my birthday while I was traveling. It was set on a hike in Mexico at dawn, the two of us whispering in broken Spanish at a vista overlooking the horizon, him describing what it felt like to push me up against the rock. Sitting thousands of miles apart and reading something he’d conjured from his own mind, I’d never been more turned on in my life. Ever since, we’ve been generating personalized stories on Smitten every few weeks, when we have time to laze around in bed and set the atmosphere. We’re not big talkers in the bedroom, so the words within erotica let us enjoy a fantasy without having to perform it. The stories permit us to want things we don’t have to say out loud.” —The Founders of Smitten8. “It Counteracts Some of the Side Effects of Cancer Treatment” “The first smut book I read was years ago, but I never really got into it. Then I had breast cancer. The treatment really dried me out, and my sex drive was gone. The doctors recommended that I read pornography. That definitely got me back into it.”— Fran*, 73, Florida9. “It Lets Me Have Sex Without All The Risks” “I first discovered smut when I was in middle school, and it was an incredible way for me to be introduced to sex beyond the penis-and-vagina intercourse we learned about in sex education—without some of the harm that could have come from exploring it off the page. I’m now in my thirties and still feel like it allows me to enjoy my sensuality and sexuality without some of the risks associated with actually trying certain things IRL. I love reading about group sex, for example, but don’t want to have to navigate the risks of actually trying it.”— Stacy*, 30, Toronto