How Do You Know If You’re Sexually Compatible?

Chemistry Vs. Compatibility

Do you see yourself with a partner who spends every weekend going out while you’d rather stay in? Whose family does 5K ”Turkey Trotts” for Thanksgiving? What about a partner that wants to have kids when you absolutely don’t? Questions like these are how you figure out whether or not you and your partner are compatible—whether you share values, interests, and how you see your lives. But what does this look like in the bedroom? How do you know if you and your partner are sexually compatible?

When there’s an emotional, mental, and romantic connection, some people assume that sexual compatibility isn’t relevant. Especially with the state of dating today, we feel lucky to find someone who’s not a glaring red flag. But sex is such an important part of a relationship—and how you and your partner align sexually can make or break it.

A couple’s sexual compatibility can be based on a range of factors: the frequency you like to have sex, the sexual dynamics you prefer, specific kinks or fetishes you may have, and even the kind of fantasies you may have.

“Sexual compatibility is really about being able to find a place of mutual pleasure,” certified sex educator Sarah Tomchesson tells Cosmopolitan.

Some of you might be thinking: I don’t even think about sex that much. Well, that in itself is a part of how you might assess sexual compatibility with a partner.

Sexual compatibility isn't about finding someone whose every desire mirrors your own.

“Some people are always looking to have a very specific kind of sex, and then build the relationship around that. And for other folks, it's that the connection and the intimacy are really the most important, and then the form that the sex takes around that really changes depending on their partner,” Tomchesson says.

In other words, sexual compatibility isn't necessarily about finding someone whose every desire mirrors your own. It's about understanding what you want from sex and what helps you experience pleasure, then figuring out whether you and another person can create something that feels good for both of you.

As a culture, we have oriented ourselves toward sexual chemistry," Tomchesson says. We tend to fixate on that immediate spark—the electricity, the tension, the need to have sex with this person right now—basically the "it factor" from every rom-com. But chemistry and compatibility aren't necessarily the same thing. "Chemistry can be something that is a spark. It's energetic," Tomchesson says. "Compatibility actually does take some work."

Compatibility, she explains, comes down to asking yourself: How do I want to feel? What kinds of activities help me feel that way? Then, when you bring another person into the equation, the question becomes what happens when your energies come together—and how you want to explore whatever the two of you create. This means, yes, you can be sexually compatible with someone without an immediate sexual spark.

"If you find a partner that the spark isn't there right away, but the two of you can kind of laugh about it and approach it with some lightness, that's a really good sign," she says.

But exploring compatibility requires both people to be willing to explore and, crucially, to have some idea of what they like in the first place. One of the first places Tomchesson thinks people should start when trying to align sexually with a partner is figuring out what they themselves want. Because, frankly, a lot of us don't actually know.

"So many of us are operating without good knowledge of our pleasure maps," Tomchesson says. Without a clear sense of what feels good to you, what turns you on, or how you like to connect sexually, it's hard to tell whether another person is truly incompatible with you, or whether the two of you just haven't figured each other out yet.

That's also why sexual compatibility isn't something you either have from day one or don't have at all. "Sexual compatibility can change over time," Tomchesson says.

Our desires change. Our bodies change. Our relationships change. What we want from sex at the beginning of a relationship might not be what we want five years later, and what feels satisfying during one period of our lives might not work during another. But that doesn't mean compatibility has disappeared.

"You can actually continue to grow and change together so that you maintain sexual compatibility over the life of your relationship," she says.

That growth becomes especially important when there's a misalignment. People tend to get nervous when they realize they aren't perfectly aligned sexually with their partner, but Tomchesson encourages people to resist treating every difference as evidence that the relationship is doomed. Instead, it helps to break down all the different things that make up a sexual dynamic and look for the points of overlap. Leaning into those shared strengths tends to be more productive than fixating on where you differ.

Expecting a partner who aligns with you 100 percent of the time is unrealistic. Both people have lives outside the relationship, and those experiences affect how they show up sexually. Stress, changing priorities, emotions, and everything else happening in your world can shift what you want (or have the capacity for) at any given moment. Part of navigating compatibility, then, is getting more honest with yourself about what you want, while giving your partner permission to be equally honest about what they want.

You might have different levels of desire, be into different things, or even have fantasies that might not completely overlap.

And while couples may feel pressure to resolve every sexual mismatch (especially when they worry about what it means for the relationship's future) Tomchesson cautions against letting that urgency take over.

"There's, like, hundreds of reasons why we have sex," she says, noting that keeping a relationship together can certainly be one of them. But compatibility shouldn't mean feeling obligated to meet every need, regardless of whether doing so feels emotionally harmful or uncomfortable. When that pressure shows up, it can help to put some space in place and remove the urgency from the dynamic.

Ultimately, sexual compatibility is what happens when two imperfectly aligned people decide to get curious about each other. You might have different levels of desire, be into different things, or even have fantasies that might not completely overlap. None of that, on its own, means you're sexually incompatible. The bigger question is whether you can talk about those differences honestly—whether you both feel safe expressing what you want and what you don't—whether there's enough mutual interest, pleasure, curiosity, and respect to explore the space between your desires, rather than expecting one person to simply conform to the other. And, perhaps most importantly, whether you can bring a little playfulness to the process.

Tomchesson says a partner that you can laugh with on your journey to figure out compatibility is more important than anything else.

So maybe the sign that you're sexually compatible isn't that you immediately know exactly what the other person wants, or that every sexual encounter is mind-blowing from the start. Rather, it's that when something doesn't quite work, neither of you sees it as a catastrophe. You can laugh it off, communicate, and get curious. And more importantly, you can ask each other: “Okay, what would it take for this to feel good—and hot—for both of us?”