What happens when a sex toy reviewer can’t get horny?

It’s a tough time to have a job that requires you to be sexually aroused. (To be fair, it’s a tough time to have a lot of jobs, and mine ranks pretty low on the stress scale – but it’s the one I know and am qualified to write about!)

This week alone, I had three – count ‘em, three – dildo reviews on my docket. As you’ve probably heard, dildos are generally designed to penetrate an orifice… and inconveniently enough, my orifices were clenched so tight from life stress and doomscrolling that they could’ve squeezed a lump of coal into some kind of vagina diamond. (Hey, free drag name/burlesque name/band name if ya need one!)

Sure, I could review a sex toy from an unaroused state – but would you want to read a restaurant review written by someone who’d eaten a full meal before going into the joint they were meant to review? Probably not, because the reviewer wouldn’t be physically or mentally equipped at that time (in all likelihood) to give the restaurant a fair shake. Likewise, I need to be sufficiently aroused when I test sex toys; otherwise I just feel like my genitals are being poked and prodded, and that experience would make for a pretty boring and useless review.

So needless to say, my uncharacteristically low libido made it troublesome that I was contractually on the hook to fuck three dildos. As a result, my testing sessions this week were some of the most difficult I’ve ever had – which, let’s face it, it’s masturbating in my own comfy bed, so even at rock-bottom, it’s hardly a gruelling day at the office (or in the mines)! But nonetheless, it was a comedy of errors from start to finish. I’d start to get turned on from reading some hot erotica on my phone, and then suddenly get a stress-spiking notification that drained all my lust in an instant. So I’d put down my phone and switch to fantasizing about my crushes du jour, and I’d quickly get overcome by panicky doubt (“What if they don’t like me?! Or, perhaps even scarier, what if they DO like me?!?”) and have to do some deep breathing to calm down. I’d refocus on hot mental images to get back into the zone, only for my building’s fire alarm to go off (it was a false alarm, but the adrenaline it dumped into my bloodstream was entirely real). And so on and so forth, until eventually I had gathered enough testing notes to write a goddamn review.

In the process of getting through these sessions, I pulled out every trick in my arsenal, gathered over 13+ years of reviewing sex toys professionally. During that time, my libido has waxed and waned due to mental health, medications, marijuana, maddeningly cute crushes, and more – but these tips have pretty consistently worked for me, on those occasions when I needed to brute-force my own arousal. Maybe they’ll help you, too.

(Obligatory note: You are never required to have sex, or to masturbate. And in fact, if you don’t feel like doing one or both of those things at the moment, then you probably shouldn’t do them! They will still be available as options, when/if your desire comes back. But I am offering these tips for those of you who would like to experience more sexual pleasure, would like to be aroused and to want sexual stimulation more often, but don’t quite know how to get there.)

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First off: eliminate distractions. This isn’t always possible, but do it to the literal absolute utmost degree that you can. For me, this means stuff like:

• Get the important items on that day’s to-do list checked off before attempting to become aroused.

• Further: Respond to any important communiqué that is burning a hole in my brain (e.g. a days-old text from a friend; a stressful email from a client) so as to be able to set it aside.

• Tidy my space a bit. Doesn’t need to be a deep clean, just needs to be neat enough that I don’t immediately start stressing or criticizing myself when I look at it.

• Set my phone to “self-care” mode or similar. If you have an iPhone, check out the “Focus Modes” function, through which you can create custom “modes” that allow certain notifications through and temporarily hide others. (Apparently Android users can find similar functions in the “parental controls” section of their settings?) My self-care mode hides everything except the most important and time-sensitive stuff, so I can get “into the zone” of pleasure more easily.

• If I’m really having a hard time putting my phone down, I will put it physically far away from me in my room, so I’m not tempted to pick it up mid-masturbation. (Truly can’t tell you how many of my testing sessions have been totally derailed by Twitter scrolling over the years…)

• Keep a notebook and pen by the bed, so I can quickly note down anything that pops into my head that I want to remember (e.g. “gotta buy dental floss,” “ooh I should write a song about Shaggy from Scooby-Doo”) and therefore be able to let it go, at least theoretically.

Next, I need to create an environment that feels safe to get sexy in. Now, some of you might be wondering, “What do you mean, ‘safe’? If you’re masturbating, you’re the only one in the room! How could it possibly be unsafe?” in which case this tip may not be relevant to you – but I know that some others will know exactly what I’m talking about! I have an extremely hard time getting turned on if my brain senses even the possibility of danger, and its danger-o-meter is particularly sensitive because of trauma (and fibromyalgia), so I have to make the environment feel extra safe to be able to get aroused. For me, this may include stuff like:

• Lock my bedroom door, so I’m not even 2% worried that I’ll be interrupted/walked in on. (I grew up living in a bedroom that lacked a lock, so this happened a few times and the fear has stayed with me!!)

• Put on some white noise, rain sounds, or soft music, to conceal any sounds that may come out of me or my vibrators. (My roommate is sex-positive and chill and truly would not care, but I do!)

• Adjust the lighting and/or curtains as needed to achieve a sense of peace and privacy. I can’t relax if the room is lit like a hospital, or if I’m worried that a neighbor can see what I’m up to.

• Get myself to a comfortable temperature, however I need to adjust myself or the space to make that happen: open a window, put a sweater on, take a sweater off, get under some blankets, turn on a fan, etc.

• Light a candle or some incense as an olfactory cue that sexy time has begun.

Now, you’re probably gonna want to focus on some kind of mental stimulation next, and if you’re flying solo, you generally have two main avenues you can pursue here: media, or fantasy. I’ll deal with each in turn, because they’re both important tools to have in one’s arousal toolbox.

By media, I mean stuff like porn & erotica, whether that’s a bookmarks folder full of Pornhub links, a curated collection of tasteful Polaroids, a spicy short-story anthology from your local bookstore, or a 20,000-word angsty hot fic from Ao3. (You do you, darlin’!) For those of you who are this way inclined, I have a couple of tips to share:

• Media is often a better route than fantasy when your mind is your own greatest distraction, whether that’s because of stress, a condition like ADHD, or just an awareness of what’s going on in the world right now! I find that I stay focused on media more easily than on fantasy in those times. However, media has the drawback of never being exactly what you want it to be, because no creator has your exact specific constellation of kinks and moment-by-moment turn-ons.

• Keep an easily-accessible repository of media that reliably works for you – the stuff you come back to again and again. Ideally this should be available to you even in circumstances where your internet access is spotty or nonexistent, because you never know when or where you’ll want to turn yourself on…

• If you’re finding yourself distracted by thoughts about a specific thing (hello, my fellow obsessive babes, I see you!), consider working with your brain’s natural inclinations, rather than against them. For example, if my brain won’t stop obsessing about a particular TV show, trying to unravel its mysteries even while I’d rather be doing other shit (*cough* Severance *cough*), then it makes sense to look for sexy fanfiction of that show, since I’m gonna be thinking about it either way.

The other major mode of mental stimulation is, of course, fantasy. Some of these tips may be limited in their usefulness among people who are not sex toy reviewers, but I’ll share them nonetheless:

• If I’m having trouble getting excited to try a particular toy, I’ll try focusing on a fantasy that is compatible with that toy. For example, if it’s an oral sex simulator, I’ll think of a celebrity who I’d like to go down on me (gosh, there are plenty) – or if it’s a dildo, I might imagine that it’s just become sentient and is experiencing sexual pleasure for the first time (hot).

• While nerdy as fuck, it is surprisingly useful to keep some kind of record of your sexual fantasies – perhaps in a spreadsheet, a physical notebook, or a note on your phone. I especially like to write down the ones that turned me on more than I expected, or that made me come really hard, as these can be quite telling. And, as with a repository of porn or erotica (also known, by people who are not me, as a “spank bank”), it’s helpful to have a list of fantasies you can come back to, time and time again, when you just need something that reliably works.

• It can be hard to stay focused on a fantasy when your mind is wandering due to stress or other factors. If I want to keep myself more engaged in a fantasy, sometimes I’ll write it out while I’m fantasizing it, as if I was writing an erotica story – but it doesn’t need to be polished at all; it doesn’t even need to make sense to anyone but me! It’s just a way of externalizing the fantasy so I can focus on it better. Some people may prefer to speak the fantasy aloud, stream-of-consciousness-style (perhaps recording it on your phone to re-listen to later), or even to depict it through drawing or other artistic mediums; do whatever it takes to keep the fantasy vivid and hot in your head.

That’s all psychological stuff, but I do also have a couple of physical tips for building and maintaining arousal when it’s tricky:

• It’s a sex educator cliché, but lube truly works wonders. Don’t use it as a shortcut to help you skip straight to penetration before you’re ready (unless you’re into that and know how to do it safely, risk-aware masochist babes!), but lube can make pretty much everything feel significantly better, even external-only stuff. More pleasure, naturally, tends to lead to more arousal.

• When trying to get turned on quickly, you might consider using a vibrator to speed up the process, before you’ve generated much arousal… but I have actually found this to be counterproductive. If I use a vibrator (even a good vibrator) from the beginning of a masturbation session, then by the time I get turned on, my sensitivity will have (temporarily) diminished – and, as mentioned, more pleasure leads to more arousal, which is why lowered sensitivity often leads to less arousal, or at least stalled-out arousal. Instead, I tend to start with super indirect stimulation like rubbing the side of my clitoral shaft through my outer labia through my underwear, and then I’ll gradually make the stimulation more and more direct as I get more turned on. I reserve vibrators for once I’m already riled up enough that my own hand feels insufficient or unexciting. (This is, of course, just my approach; you can do whatever you want!)

Well, there you have it… My crash course to force-feeding yourself pleasure to help generate arousal when you want to (or, in my case, when you are contractually required to). I hope this helps somebody even half as much as it helps me on deadline days!

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