A beginner’s guide to exploring what you like

There is a quiet assumption that by the time we reach our thirties, we should simply know what we like. We’re expected to be fluent in desire. Clear, confident, experienced. As though pleasure is something you either “figure out” in your twenties or miss the window entirely.

But the truth is this: most women were taught how to be desirable long before they were ever taught how to desire.

We learned how to look attractive. How to be chosen. How to be accommodating. How to not be “too much.” What we rarely learned was how to ask ourselves, calmly and honestly, “What actually feels good to me?”. So if you’re starting from a place of uncertainty — if your honest answer is “I don’t know what I’m into” — that is not a failure. It is a beginning.

Exploration does not require a label. You do not need to declare yourself adventurous, submissive, dominant, vanilla, kinky, or anything else. Those words can be useful, but they are not prerequisites. What matters far more is curiosity. The shift from “What should I like?” to “What feels interesting to me?”

For many of us, fiction is the safest place to start. The dynamics we gravitate toward in books can tell us something, if we’re willing to look closely. Do you find yourself drawn to slow burn tension and emotional intimacy? To powerful characters who command the room? To devotion, obsession, longing? To playful experimentation and shifting dynamics?

Fantasy is information. It is not instruction. Loving a morally grey character does not mean you want chaos in your real life. Enjoying power play on the page does not mean you are required to recreate it. Fiction is a playground — a place to notice what sparks without consequence.

Alongside reading fiction, there’s real value in engaging with non-fiction that approaches desire, embodiment, and self-ownership with nuance and integrity. For those who want to bring intentionality to the way they think about desire — not through pressure but through understanding — we’ve curated a list of The Best Non-Fiction for Understanding and Owning Your Desire. These books offer grounded, sex-positive perspectives that help illuminate the psychology of pleasure, the social conditioning around sexuality, and what it means to reclaim your own agency.

Beyond fantasy, your body offers its own data. Pleasure is not purely intellectual. It lives in your nervous system. Notice when you feel relaxed. Notice when you feel energised in a good way. Notice when you feel tense in a way that feels exciting, and when you feel tense in a way that feels uncomfortable. There is a difference.

Exploring what you like is less about intensity and more about safety. When your body feels safe, curiosity expands. When your body feels pressured, it contracts. That response is not dramatic or irrational; it is protective. Listening to it is an act of self-respect.

Language can help here. Not because you need to impress anyone with terminology, but because having the right words reduces shame. Understanding concepts like consent, boundaries, power dynamics, and aftercare creates clarity. It allows you to say, “I’m curious about this,” or “That doesn’t work for me,” without feeling naive or dramatic. Vocabulary builds confidence.

Communication is where exploration becomes real. Not in grand gestures, but in small conversations. It can be as simple as saying, “I’ve been thinking about what I actually enjoy,” or “I’d love to try something slightly different and see how it feels.” Exploration is collaborative. It is not a performance and it is not a test.

It is also not a race. There is no prize for being the most adventurous person in the room. Growth does not require extremity. Sometimes it looks like changing the pace. Sometimes it looks like asking for more reassurance. Sometimes it looks like discovering that what you thought you should want is not what you want at all. And perhaps most importantly, your preferences are allowed to change. What felt exciting five years ago may feel overwhelming now. What once felt safe may feel limiting. Desire evolves as you do. There is no fixed destination where you finally “arrive” as a sexually complete person.

The real goal of exploring what you like is not to become impressive. It is to become honest.

Honest enough to admit what excites you. Honest enough to acknowledge what doesn’t. Honest enough to ask for what you want without apology and to decline what you don’t without guilt. That is pleasure literacy. Not performance. Not trend-following. Not shock value. Self-knowledge. And self-knowledge — especially in a world that has long encouraged women to be quiet about their desires — is powerful.

If you are at the beginning of that process, you are not behind. You are exactly where you need to be.