

“It could be a way to actually deepen the experience of knowing the partner,” she says. Together, you can pick out audiobooks to listen to, explore different story lines, and use what happens in those stories to talk about what turns you on and what doesn’t and even to open up to fantasy play. Erotic audiobooks give couples a way to talk about sex in a fun way. “Sex is the least-talked-about thing in relationships,” Kaufman says.

It might even be a way to strengthen your bond with your partner, Kaufman and Garrison say. Hearing an erotic story rather than viewing it gives you permission to create the scenes in your own mind, he says, making it more personal to you.Īnd because it’s hands-free, he notes, you and your partner can be touching each other while listening-maybe even in the same ways you’re hearing about in the story-and because you’re listening rather than watching, you’re seeing each other rather than what’s on the screen. Listening gets our imaginations working in a way that watching porn just can’t do.

“When we read aloud to a person or when we listen to something being read to us, that stimulates parts of our brain that the written word would not-or the physical touch or something else-would also not,” says sexologist Garrison, who is also the author of Mastering Multiple Position Sex. Listening to erotic audiobooks can also be less threatening than watching porn, she says, because there are no body image insecurities raised by watching actors that don’t look anything like you.īut the thing that makes erotic audiobooks so exciting is that listening stimulates the brain, and as we all know, the brain is our biggest and most powerful sex organ. What makes listening to erotic audiobooks so appealing?įor one thing, it’s a lower-threshold entry into erotic fantasy than watching porn, says sex therapist Sandi Kaufman, because erotic audiobooks don’t necessarily have the stigma that’s associated with porn. Audible doesn't release sales figures, but the spokesperson says subscribers to the romance package have been growing month-over-month since it was launched, and consumer demand has been so strong that the company is commissioning its own titles. The strength of the romance genre prompted the company to launch the Audible Romance Package, a subscription service, in 2017. (Audible, owned by Amazon, is the biggest audiobook seller and producer around.) Romance titles such as Lucky Suit by Lauren Blakely, narrated by Zachary Webber and Andi Arndt, regularly appear on Audible’s overall bestsellers list, says a company spokesperson.
