The pandemic has taken a major toll on our sex lives. Why are our intimate relationships flagging – and could the damage be long lasting?
By Jessica Klein
Before the pandemic, many couples lived like “two ships passing in the night”, says Houston, Texas-based sex therapist Emily Jamea. Previously overscheduled with out-of-home commitments, some partners found that pandemic-related lockdowns offered a much-needed respite. Being stuck at home let them slow down and take more time for intimate moments together – at first.
“Initially, the pandemic gave people the opportunity to… reconnect in a way that maybe previously they were only able to do on vacation,” says Jamea. As the pandemic wore on, however, it began to “take its toll” on intimate relationships, she says. “For the majority of couples, sexual desire kind of took a nosedive.”
Studies from around the world tell a similar story. Research conducted in Turkey, Italy, India and the US in 2020 all points to the decline in sex with partners as well as solo acts, directly attributed to lockdown. “I think a big part of the reason for that is because so many people were just too stressed out,” says Justin Lehmiller, social psychologist and research fellow at The Kinsey Institute, which conducted the US-based study.
For most, pandemic-induced lockdowns created an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear. Many experienced unprecedented health-related anxiety, financial insecurity and other significant life changes. Stress caused by these factors – not to mention the problems that arise from spending too much time with another person in a cramped, indoor space – contributed to the notable decline in partnered people’s sex lives.
In ways, the Covid-19 world has proven toxic for sexuality – so will we be able to snap back into our sexual selves after pandemic stress dissipates, or have our relationships suffered long-lasting damage?
A decline in desire
As Jamea observed, many couples did enjoy a short boost in their sex lives at the beginning of lockdowns. Rhonda Balzarini, a social psychologist and assistant professor at Texas State University, US, describes this initial spike in sexual desire as a “honeymoon” phase, when people react more constructively to stress.
“During this phase, people tend to work together. It might be when you’re going to your neighbour’s house and giving them toilet paper on the doorstep when they need it,” says Balzarini. “But then over time, as resources become more scarce, people become more stressed and the energy wears off, disillusionment and depression tend to set in. When that starts to happen is when we might be starting to see couples get in trouble.”
Balzarini observed this pattern across participants, aged 18 and older, from 57 countries in a study she and colleagues conducted during the pandemic. At the pandemic’s onset, Balzarini and colleagues saw factors such as financial concern associated with higher sexual desire between partners. However, over time, as people reported increased pandemic-related stressors, including loneliness, general stress and Covid-19-specific worries, they also reported decreased sexual desire for their partners.
The big takeaway in this study, according to Balzarini, is the link among stress, depression and sexual desire. At the start of the pandemic, stressors might not have been “triggering depression” yet, she explains. But when those stressors became prolonged, people grew exhausted. Stress correlated with depression, and “depression negatively affects sexual desire”, she says.
In addition to the everyday stressors brought on by the pandemic, the larger threat of the virus loomed, as death and hospitalisation rates increased across the globe. This ever-present danger certainly helped kill the mood for couples.
“You’ll hear sex therapists say something along the lines of, ‘Two zebras won’t mate in front of a lion’,” says Jamea. “If there’s a massive threat right there, that sends a signal to our bodies that now’s probably not a good time to have sex.” For that reason, “heightened stress leads to low desire or difficulty with arousal”, she says.
Too much togetherness
While Balzarini heard about couples taking daytime showers or mid-afternoon swims together at the start of the pandemic, those sexier-than-normal experiences eventually “lost their allure”, she says. They gave way to mounting daily demands, like messier homes, and couples started to nit-pick each other.
Lehmiller describes this as the “overexposure effect”,which provides opportunities for “little habits your partner has to start to get on your nerves”. (Balzarini recalls someone telling her they never realised how loudly their partner chewed until they started eating every single meal together during lockdown.)
This increased time together can also seriously dampen sexual excitement. “One of the keys to maintaining desire in a long-term relationship is having some sense of mystery about your partner and some distance,” says Lehmiller. “When you see each other all the time… the sense of mystery goes away.”
Separated from their pre-pandemic social and professional lives, people can also begin to lose their sense of self, which can affect sexual confidence and performance. Women especially have had to push careers to the side during the pandemic, as household chores, childcare and home-schooling demands have disproportionately fallen on them.
“That was really, really hard for a lot of women,” says Jamea. “[Careers] are such a big part of identity, and we bring everything that we are into the bedroom. If we don’t know who we are, all of a sudden, it can feel like there’s nothing to bring.”
Can we bounce back?
Sex isn’t necessarily doomed, however. Researchers at the Kinsey Institute suggested one specific behaviour to improve couples’ sex lives: shaking things up. One in five study participants tried something new in bed, and it helped revive desire and intimacy.
“People who tried new things were much more likely to report improvements,” says Lehmiller. New activities that helped improve partners’ sex lives included “trying new positions, acting on fantasies, engaging in BDSM and giving massages”, per the study.
But for those in relationships where sexual activity dwindled over the past year and has not picked back up, will there be lasting damage? It depends, say experts.
Some may not recover “because they had such a prolonged… lack of connection”, says Lehmiller. His research also showed that some people cheated on their partners for the first time ever during the pandemic – an indiscretion that can be hard for partners to recover from. Others will continue to suffer from pandemic-related job losses as well as financial stressors that loom over relationships and can cause friction.
But, for many, there’s hope. With more people getting vaccinated, businesses are reopening, and some workers are returning to the office. “People are starting to fall back into their old routine,” says Jamea. She’s seeing the positive effects of this on couples in her practice.
Any sort of return to “normalcy” is a good indicator for partners whose struggles began during the pandemic. “It’s possible that some of these couples, once the pandemic is under control… will go back to the way that things were before,” says Lehmiller. “That stressor is now removed, and their sex lives will improve.”
Can online sex fill the connection void?
About three months into lockdown in the UK, 26-year-old student Emma signed into a Zoom meeting with a group of people she’d only ever met through online chats. Organised by Killing Kittens, a company that, pre-Covid-19, hosted in-person sex parties with an emphasis on women’s empowerment, the “virtual house party” kicked off with drinking games. It was unlike anything she’d ever attended.
“We played ‘Never Have I Ever’,” she says, “and [the organisers] asked us questions like, ‘Which celebrity would you most like to see at a Killing Kittens party?’.” It got attendees talking about their fantasies and preferences – a smooth segue into the less structured part of the evening, during which some participants “removed clothing”, says Emma. “It was just a really good, quite sexy interaction with other people.”
It was the kind of connection Emma had been craving. With her one housemate staying with family, and having lost her job in March, Emma has spent much of the pandemic physically isolated. “There were points at which it got quite lonely,” she says.
Though she’d attended sex parties in the past, Emma had only just joined Killing Kittens in November 2019. “I was a little nervous to get properly involved,” she says, and when the pandemic hit, she worried she’d missed her chance. Instead, she joined one of Killing Kittens’s singles chat groups and started making close friends, which made her feel comfortable enough to try a virtual party on for size.
During the pandemic, social isolation has also meant sexual isolation for both individuals and couples hoping to explore physical intimacy. While recreating the tactile experience of sex online isn’t straightforward, virtual experiences – from dirty-talk Zoom workshops to sex parties like the one Emma attended – have helped fill the intimacy-shaped void felt by so many. To a certain extent, at least. For attendees and organisers, online sexual encounters can ‘mimic’ in-person experiences and offer much-need psychological relief, but there’s no direct replacement for physical touch.
However, beyond just acting as a stand-in for sex during the pandemic, these virtual experiences may also be showing us what’s important in intimacy writ large – both while we’re in isolation and once we can touch each other again.
Discovering digital intimacy
Almost a year into the pandemic, many have found ways to date and form relationships online. Dating apps such as Bumble now let users indicate “virtual only” or “socially distanced” dating preferences. According to a Bumble representative, in-app video calls were up by 42% in May 2020 compared to pre-lockdown March.
But replicating a first date via video chat is a far cry from recreating sexual experiences over the web. Key elements – physical touch most prominently – don’t have a straightforward, online substitute.
Still, people are getting virtually intimate. In October, hard-seltzer company Basic surveyed 2,000 single under 35-year-olds in the US, and found that 58% had had virtual sex during the pandemic. Of those, 77% did so with someone they’d never had sex with in person. Per a Bumble survey of 5,000 UK singles, 32% said “digital intimacy” was important in a relationship “both during lockdown and when measures lifted”.
For Emma and others who’ve dabbled in online sexual encounters in the past year, things like virtual sex parties, educational Zoom workshops, remotely controlled sex toys and simply engaging in sex-positive communities have proven to be both sexually fulfilling and antidotes to physical intimacy. “There’s a big sexual gratification in being able to watch and be watched,” says Emma, who describes herself as an “exhibitionist”.
Plus, watching real couples have sex is different from watching pornography. It’s personal – and the connections Emma’s made in these sex-positive spaces are, too. She and other single attendees have formed “tight bonds”, she says, “because we’ve all shared this experience on a very similar level”.
In London, David runs the brick-and-mortar adult lifestyle club Le Boudoir. In October, when he started hosting virtual sex parties with other London lifestyle clubs such as Purple Mamba, he noticed first-time attendees behaving like they would in physical spaces. Instead of huddling in the corner, they’re initially hesitant to virtually chat with others, but “you can literally see them warm throughout the evening”, says David.
Like Killing Kittens, these events start with icebreakers and performances (i.e., erotic dancers), which help get people in the mood. The progression of the parties looks a lot like it would in real life. “That’s technology mimicking real life,” he adds.
The element of safety
The online nature of these events also expands attendee demographics, so they span more locations, age ranges and experience levels.
People attend Boudoir and Purple Mamba’s events from Israel, South Korea, Australia and the US. A party that starts on Saturday evening, UK time can roll into evening on the US’s East Coast and across America. Killing Kittens’ founder and CEO Emma Sayle has also noticed virtual events attracting younger attendees – not only because they’re more online and “that’s how they communicate”, says Sayle, but also because online events remove the financial barrier to showing up at a physical party. Online Killing Kittens parties cost £20 ($27), while in-person ones can cost £350 ($480).
Emma, who doesn’t live in a major city, likes that she doesn’t have to spend money on travelling to an event in London, which would include putting up for a hotel, meals and new clothes. “As a student, that’s quite nice,” she says.
Boudoir and Purple Mamba’s virtual sex parties now attract around 150 attendees on a given Saturday. About half are first timers. Sayle sees a similar split at Killing Kittens’ events. “A lot of [attendees] are totally new people who would never have thought about [attending a sex party] before,” says Sayle. There’s a “safety element” to showing up via video chat, she adds: “You can close the screen at any point.”
That’s exactly what made UK-based couple Matt, 31, and Emily, 29, feel comfortable about going to their first-ever sex party during the pandemic, with Boudoir and Purple Mamba, online. “You’re in your own house,” says Matt. “It’s the safety of it.” Though they would have likely gone to an in-person event eventually, “it would have taken longer,” says Emily.
So far, the online events have let them explore their sexuality and relationship. Everyone’s “different styles” come through, says Matt, which creates a real, shared experience with another couple – one they didn’t think they’d want to experience before the pandemic. They’ve since changed their minds. Virtual encounters have also helped Matt and Emily put language to their desires. Because they’ve had to clearly communicate with others remotely, they’ve learned certain terms that describe their preferences.
This fits with a trend Michigan-based sexologist Megan Stubbs has observed. “I see more avenues of communication being open. People are talking more and getting more specific about their needs.” Distance necessitates this. When you’re not in the same room as your sex partner(s), you can’t rely on body language and subtle cues. But, she adds, “Just because you’re separated by distance doesn’t mean the activity you’re doing… is somehow less than if it was in person.”
‘Touch deprivation’
Still, experts and people having virtual sex agree nothing can completely substitute for physical touch. As Sayle puts it, “You can’t recreate an orgy online.”
This is, in part, because of the cellular processes that take place when a person is touched. Tiffany Field, who heads the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, explains that “moderate pressure touch” stimulates pressure receptors under the skin. “That sets off a chain reaction,” she says, that slows the nervous system. “The heart rate slows down, blood pressure slows, and brainwaves change in the direction of theta, which is a relaxation state.”
Levels of cortisol, the stress hormone that kills immune cells, also decrease when we’re touched, while natural killer cells (which kill bacteria, viral and cancer cells) increase, according to Field’s research, which specifically examines massage therapy. “It’s ironic, during this time when there’s a lot of touch deprivation going on,” she says, “that we don’t have the protection of the natural killer cells killing the viral cells.”
Based on her research of “moderate pressure touch,” Field says people living alone can still help stave off touch deprivation through “self-touch”. That even includes simple activities such as stretching and walking, which stimulate pressure receptors on the bottoms of our feet. Engaging in virtual sex surely falls into that category, if participants are willing to get active.
A deeper appreciation
Of these online-sexual-experience organisers and participants, all say they’ll likely continue with virtual experiences even when it’s safe to mingle with strangers. Digital intimacy offers something unique – the ability to stay at home but still engage in a fulfilling activity, with a geographically wider array of people, for minimal or zero cost.
In-person events, though, will likely boom. “Thousands of years of history of what happens post-pandemics and post-war show that people start shagging,” says Sayle. “It’s going to happen.”
The pandemic could also have another effect – it may make us all realise how touch-deprived we were to begin with. Before Covid-19, touch expert Field and colleagues were conducting a study in which they observed how much people were touching one another at airport departure gates. People were touching, says Field, only 4% of the time. Sixty-eight percent of the time, they were on their phones. Online platforms and social media were driving us physically apart pre-pandemic. Now, they’re facilitating people being together.
“I think what Covid has done has exacerbated [touch deprivation],” says Field. “Maybe [people] are beginning to appreciate that they’re missing the touch they did have.”
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