Everyone awaits the day when the COVID-19 pandemic will end. Yet, backlash caused by the SARS-CoV variant is far from over for COVID long-haulers who continue to be ill long after they experience their first symptoms.
Despite the worldwide burnout known as “COVID fatigue,” sexual long COVID may motivate the global community to continue its best efforts to prevent the spread of coronavirus variants.
Below are a few possible symptoms of long COVID leading to sexual long COVID:
Erectile dysfunction in males; emotional distress and low libido in females
Circulation disorders that block blood flow to the genitals
Brain fog, including confusion, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate or stay awake during sex
Endocrine disorders involving a new onset of diabetes, thyroid disease, or low testosterone levels
Anxiety and depression related to long-haul problems that suppress libido
Sensory dysfunctions or nerve pathway disorders causing tingling or pain in hands and feet
Musculoskeletal pain and joint tenderness that makes intimate activity uncomfortable
Brain events (such as strokes) and cardiac dysfunctions ranging from extra beats to heart attacks
Lung problems like shortness of breath, cough and chest discomfort that deter intercourse
Many physicians tell survivors they have no measurable COVID-19 after-effects and blame nuisance symptoms like poor sexual performance on “pandemic stress.” Unfortunately, these misdiagnoses diminish the COVID survivor’s plea for help.
Moreover, physicians don’t discuss sexual health issues unless the patient mentions the problem first — many patients are too embarrassed to report sexual performance issues while struggling to recover, so sexual long COVID often goes untreated.
Anita’s COVID Nightmare
Sixty-four-year-old Anita (a pseudonym), who lives in The Villages in Florida, caught COVID-19 in December 2021. She tested positive after developing a fever, fatigue, and cough. She soon became short of breath and struggled to perform simple tasks.
Anita went to the Emergency Department and was in intensive care for five days because of low oxygen levels caused by COVID pneumonia. She reported feeling death anxiety as soon as her hospitalization began, and her thoughts about death persisted for months.
To this day, Anita has not fully recovered from COVID-19 because of her anxiety and shortness of breath. This fear affects her love life. She also claims that experiencing COVID-19 is still her most debilitating issue.
“Before I discovered that my illness caused me to develop asthma, I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel so confused. It took weeks to realize that I was awakening because I was short of breath.”
“I admit to having significant problems with my love life because I am afraid sexual activity will trigger an asthma attack.”
Fortunately, after months of doctor’s visits, testing, and medication trials, Anita reports her asthma to be in better control. “I now depend on two inhalers, especially when I exert myself. I cannot hike or exercise like I did before I got sick without having an asthma attack.”
“However, I admit to having significant problems with my love life because I am afraid sexual activity will trigger an asthma attack. I’m hopeful I’ll one day feel as well as I did pre-COVID. I don’t have the same quality of life since long COVID impacted my world. I’m so glad my husband didn’t catch my infection, but I think he knows my illness has damaged our love life.”
Anita’s experience of having to endure months of doctor visits and testing confirms how hard it was for her to get the health care she eventually received for her breathing issues.
Her primary care physician kept telling her that she was imagining her long COVID problems and suggested she needed a therapist. She admits that no one has asked her if COVID-19 has affected her sexual health.
Long COVID and Tiny Blood Clots
Clyde Goodheart, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is a biomedical research scientist who studies viruses and other disease causes. Goodheart believes that long COVID complications are likely due to “micro clots” that block blood flow to multiple affected organs.
According to Goodheart, “COVID long haulers who have problems with breathing most likely have tiny clots in the smallest blood vessels (capillaries) in their lungs.”
Goodheart explains how tiny blood clots cause endothelial dysfunction, which occurs when the linings of blood vessels become damaged, causing circulation to the affected organs to become blocked. Post-COVID endothelial dysfunction contributes to erectile dysfunction (ED) when micro clots impair the circulation inside the penis, which causes problems with getting or keeping an erection.
Genital circulation is not the only organ system affected by impaired circulation; lungs, brain, heart, nerves,and muscles can all potentially be damaged by micro clots that impair circulation.
Erectile Dysfunction as a Marker for Sexual Long COVID
A study by the University of Florida Health (UFH) shows that men infected by a SARS-CoV-2 variant are three times more likely to develop erectile dysfunction than men unaffected by infection.
Here’s what UFH researchers discovered:
In men who suffered significant COVID-19 infections, those with increased risk factors for COVID-19 complications were most likely to develop long-term ED.
Complication risk factors include prior history of diabetes, lung disease, obesity, circulation or heart disease and smoking.
The virus binds to primary organ tissues, including the penis and testicles. This bond decreases the amount of testosterone produced and increases the risk of ED. The virus has been found in penis tissue biopsy long after the initial infection.
Testosterone loss increases the risk of developing all other complications associated with long COVID.
The study also confirmed that sexual long COVID causes both genders to experience brain fog, breathlessness, anxiety and fatigue.
The Impact of Sexual Long COVID
It is fair to say that the next global public health crisis may be to care for patients afflicted with life-altering disabilities caused by long COVID.
The threat of sexual long COVID may be psychologically more intimidating to the COVID-weary community than are other long-haul complications. Sexual long COVID may spur more people to vaccinate or to improve their social distancing and other transmission precautions.
Only time will tell how COVID-19 will affect those most affected by the long-term exponential complications. More research and a better understanding of all factors that make COVID-19 an enduring pandemic are needed to provide the best treatment practices for the millions infected worldwide.
There’s been a lot of speculation about how the COVID-19 pandemic would change our sex lives. At first, when people thought they were facing just a couple of weeks at home, there were predictions of a new baby boom. The assumption was that lots of people would spend their newfound free time having hot, passionate sex.
Then, when it became clear that quarantine would last a long time (and the pandemic would have a devastating impact), predictions of a divorce boom started rolling in — for the first time ever, people were stuck inside with their spouses, and maybe their children, without an escape. Surely that would lead to a lot of breakups. Finally, we had “hot vax summer.” Once the vaccines started rolling out, we once again predicted that people would use their relative freedom to start hooking up all the time.
But none of this actually happened. New data from theNational Coalition for Sexual Health and the Kinsey Institute looks at how American sex lives actually changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. For one, instead of igniting sexual fires, the pandemic cooled many of us way down. But it also seems to have strengthened relationships and encouraged sexual exploration.
Here are some of the ways our sex lives have changed since March of 2020:
1. People are having less sex overall
The survey finds that over half of Americans aged 18-35 reported sexual difficulties during the pandemic, including low sexual interest, mismatched sex drives with their partners, and trouble orgasming.
These results aren’t too surprising. There are a couple of big reasons people may have had less sex than they did pre-pandemic. For one, couples may have simply had less opportunity, says Justin Lehmiller, PhD, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute who led the survey and data analysis. The prediction that everyone would have lots of sex, overlooked couples who had children at home. With everyone home all the time and no way to get childcare, parents were likely hard-pressed to find time for sex. People who were in long-distance relationships also lost opportunities for partnered, in-person sex, as did people who were single.
But perhaps the biggest reason people saw a dip in libido or trouble orgasming is the stress and uncertainty COVID-19 caused across the world, says Raegan McDonald-Mosley, MD, an OB/GYN and CEO of Power to Decide. For a lot of people, stress and anxiety are big libido killers, and the pandemic gave us many, many reasons to be stressed. Millions of people lost jobs, many became part-time teachers in addition to stay-at-home parents, and all of us had to worry about ourselves or someone we love getting sick. So even though coupled up people had more time with their partners, they weren’t necessarily in the mood for sex.
“People’s focus was on survival, especially at the beginning when there was so much uncertainty about the level of infectiousness of the virus and how to protect yourself,” Dr. McDonald-Mosley says. Instead of sexual pleasure, many of us focused on basic needs.
2. Instead of a baby boom, there was a baby bust
The baby boom prediction isn’t exactly a new one. Anytime there’s a big storm that forces people to stay home for a while, people speculate about an influx of births. The logic makes sense—there’s a chance people will have more sex when stuck at home and, statistically, more sex should equal more babies. But this prediction ignores both the libido-killing stress of the pandemic and the existence of very effective contraceptives.
“If you look at the reasons why people have sex, having sex to have a baby is actually one of the least common reasons,” Dr. Lehmiller says. And it became even less common during the pandemic. Birth rates in the U.S. declined after the pandemic was declared a national emergency. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 763 fewer births each day in December 2020 than there were in December 2019. With hospitals packed with COVID-19 patients, fears of catching the virus, and economic reasons like job loss, it’s not hard to see why couples would purposefully delay having a baby during the pandemic.
3. Couples are communicating more
Not everything about the way COVID-19 changed our relationships was doom and gloom. In fact, the data imply that many couples learned how to communicate more effectively during the pandemic. Instead of the predicted divorce boom, people figured out how to make their relationships work.
“The pandemic really tested people in ways they hadn’t been tested before,” Dr. Lehmiller says. “And it prompted a lot of people to have more meaningful conversations about their relationships and what they want.”
The survey showed that 47 percent of people in relationships increased their communication with partners to deal with sexual problems, as opposed to only 15 percent of singles. Of course, there were still breakups and divorces, but the overall trend for relationships was surprisingly positive. “It suggests that our relationships are more resilient than we give them credit for,” Dr. Lehmiller says.
Because society places so much shame on sex drive, whether you think yours is too low or too high, it can be really difficult to talk about your sexual desires or problems you notice in your sex life. It’s wonderful to see more couples speaking candidly. If you’re interested in talking to your partner or future partners about sex, the National Coalition for Sexual Health has put together a guide to thinking through sexual concerns and having the conversation.
4. People are exploring sex toys, lube, and kinks
One other silver lining for many couples, and some singles, was a push toward sexual exploration. The data shows that many people tried sex toys for the first time during the pandemic. “People got more sexually exploratory in a lot of ways,” Dr. Lehmiller says. Couples who could easily be together explored new forms of pleasure as well as having sex in new positions or new places, while singles tried virtual solutions like sexting and phone sex.
Those who tried new things were more likely to report improvement in their sex lives than those who didn’t, Dr. Lehmiller says. The data show that among people in relationships, 42 percent reported more satisfying sex lives during the pandemic, compared to 20 percent of singles. This may indicate that sexual exploration can be an adaptive way to maintain a healthy sex life during a stressful time, according to Dr. Lehmiller. Sometimes the solution is as simple as trying a new way or place to have sex or using lube or a sex toy for the first time.
5. Online dating is on the rise
As much as we hear about online dating, most Americans still haven’t tried it. As of 2020, only about one in three Americans had ever dated online, Dr. Lehmiller says. Yet, the pandemic likely added fuel to the trend. Dr. Lehmiller’s data finds that many people tried online dating for the first time during the pandemic.
“One of the things we saw in our Kinsey Institute data was that the nature of online dating is different now than it was before,” he says. People are having longer, more meaningful and intimate conversations online. Prior to the pandemic, many people used dating apps as a way to find someone to date, send a few messages, and meet up in person as soon as possible.
Now, people are taking the time to really get to know someone online first. There’s a rise also in virtual dates, which helps them test the waters before meeting someone in person. A virtual date has the benefit of being totally free and giving you an easy escape if you need it. “So I think the model for relationships going forward is shifting,” Dr. Lehmiller says. He sees a future where many people use virtual dates as a step between connecting online and meeting in person.
“I use kink as my hope for the future,” says Jade Sky, a 25-year-old living in New York. Between a cross-country move, changing jobs, and tenuous survival, the pandemic hit Sky hard — and kept hitting — as the exhaustion of isolation dragged on. A self-described “passionate sadist and curious masochist,” Sky turned inward during the pandemic and took what they call a Sadist’s Sabbatical of deep study, solo BDSM workshopping, and kinky research. For Sky, kink became on anchor in a time of deep uncertainty.
In her new docu-series, sex educator and erotic film director Madison Young puts Sky’s personal theory to the test: Can kink really heal our pandemic trauma?
The resounding answer? Absolutely.
Young released her new docu-series, Submission Possible in June of 2020. The pilot, shot nine months prior, aired just as the pandemic started in the U.S., halting production for the rest of the season. After consulting with COVID compliance officers, changing travel plans to stick to the West Coast, cutting back to a three-person skeleton crew and getting vaccinated in April 2021, Young felt safe enough to resume Submission Possible. Amid extra precautions, “there was just this extra tender desire to share our stories and connect after all the isolation we were coming out of,” Young says.
There’s a marked difference in the show’s tone after the pandemic sets in. Young, wearing a vulva-patterned COVID face mask, talks to passers-by on the streets of Seattle. Watching people open up about deeply personal, intimate subjects like safety and sex, while still masked, is a bit of a mindfuck. It feels normal to not see people’s faces anymore.
Submission Possible doesn’t shy away from challenging subjects — the pandemic is front and center, and so is systemic racism, social unrest, and hierarchy internal to queer and sex positive communities. For Sky, Submission Impossible is so exciting because of its complexity — and refusal to play into the toxic BDSM stereotypes they see in shows like Netflix’s Bonding. “I am so excited to see a show like this coming out. I’ve been looking for something that covers lots of ground, brings in voices that deserve to be heard, and really represents kinks and the people that practice them.”
As the show evolved, Young realized that the complex, messy stories she was exploring were offering more than just a pulse on the landscape of sex positivity. These stories could be used more widely to heal pandemic trauma. Kink itself is a sort of travel, an uneven roadmap full of not just precautions, ethics, and responsibility, but also joy and care.
Kink is a term that describes a variety of erotic practices, the most common of which fall under the BDSM (bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, and sadism-masochism) umbrella. Kink, like queerness, is often resistant to any one, stable definition. But at its core, kink is consensual, erotic behavior that engages power in some way.
Kink, as a practice, has deep ties to LGBTQ+ communities, and like homosexuality, was pathologized as “sexual deviancy” in the DSM (the primary clinical manual of mental illness diagnoses). But kink’s capacity for healing has long been noted by not just community members and practitioners, but also by scholars and researchers. One 2013 study found that BDSM practitioners “were less neurotic, more extraverted, more open to new experiences, more conscientious, less rejection sensitive, [and] had higher subjective well-being” than the control group. Other practitioners use kink to process self harm, abuse, or sexual assault. Unlike traumatizing experiences where people aren’t able to control what happens to their bodies and mind, kink is all about creating a space where choice matters.
According to The Gender and Sexuality Therapy Center, the process of creating and experiencing consensual scenes and care allows the body to rewire the brain’s response to certain stimuli. Basically, this means that kink builds new, positive experiences “to heal and, in a sense, “overwrite” past traumatic ones.” This reclamation of both body and power can be an important opportunity for self-actualization and transformation.
Young identifies three key aspects of kink that can help people deal with pandemic trauma: negotiation, a forthcoming attitude about health status, and a sense of play. Negotiation is about identifying what is nourishing for your own body and communicating that to others, while holding that same space and regard for your potential play partners. It’s essentially an in-depth check in and a space to ask questions of yourself and others. Negotiation is also a part of informed consent, and pre-pandemic, it was used mostly to identify safe words, agree on safer sex practices, express hard boundaries, likes, and dislikes, and find mutually satisfying aftercare strategies.
An essential aspect of negotiation, Young says, is noting how the body reacts and feels to different hypothetical scenarios. Do you feel comfortable going to a play party where there will be 50 people inside? Do you feel comfortable renting a private dungeon with a partner? Do you feel comfortable attending an outdoor socially distanced porn screening where folks are masked and required to show their vax cards?
“With each of these we check in with ourselves and see in our bodies how each of these scenarios feel, and acquire the information and data we need to analyze our risk and make a decision,” says Young.
Likewise, the practice of sharing one’s status refers to the communal norm in kink spaces to disclose STI status and sometimes disability status in the interest of the safest sex possible. Kinksters are in general more used to not only asking tender questions, but also getting regular STI (and now Covid) tests. Of course, getting tested for COVID is scary — but realizing other communities have found ways to deal with, and manage, risks can be reassuring in uncertain times.
Unlike traumatizing experiences where people aren’t able to control what happens to their bodies and mind, kink is all about creating a space where choice matters.
Finally, Young talks about the art of play, “Whether it is a puppy or Mistress, Nurse, librarian, pony, or leather Daddy — stepping into a role and surrendering to a sense of play can be liberating, joyful and absolutely healing.” Play is something humans are born doing. Children emphasize play and learn to socialize through games and play-acting. Along the way— often somewhere between puberty and adulthood—the demands of capitalism get in the way and we stop playing. Kink is a chance for people like Sky to find joy again. “Kink encourages me to keep learning and hoping even when it feels like hope isn’t in easy supply,” says Sky. It was in that “erotic hope” that Sky found the “wonderful medicine” for their own healing.
Young’s strategies aren’t about sex, but about flexibility, risk management, and compassion. It’s not a coincidence that negotiation, disclosure, and play are easily adapted to pandemic times — these three strategies were developed by kink communities to protect one another and to extend basic compassion and respect to others. That’s exactly why shows like Submission Possible don’t just matter when we need individual healing — they also matter when we need to find a new normal together.
I can’t remember a time I wasn’t interested in sex. As a child, I felt a sort of morbid curiosity towards it and I recognised it as the ‘ultimate sin’. The thing that would get me a ticket straight to hell. As time passed, my curiosity shifted. I was no longer scared, just intrigued and excited.
As a queer Nigerian woman, I know firsthand the level of defiance it takes to explore sexuality. Not only because of the misogyny I have to deal with but also because finding opportunities and people to explore with is an entire battle. I revelled in my defiance though and sex soon became one of my favourite things to do. Rough sex, slow sex, edging, bondage – I tried it all.
Then the pandemic happened and like so many others I had to adjust to a different reality that involved nosy and demanding family members. It wasn’t one I liked or wanted. It made me feel like life was being sucked out of my vagina. I didn’t think it was going to be so bad. Yes, I couldn’t be with any of my sexual partners but I had my fingers and I did a good job taking care of myself. But I soon realised that masturbating wasn’t going to be entirely possible.
I am a bit of a perfectionist with my orgasms. There were a couple of details that I needed to get right if I hoped to get one. The most important was noise; I cannot orgasm if I can hear people talking. But with a family of five quarantining together, it was impossible to find personal time. I didn’t realise when I went a month without an orgasm. It was so unlike me but I brushed it off because by then I had a bigger problem.
My mother had started going back into the office because we needed the money and every time she came home, she spent almost 30 minutes disinfecting. Her paranoia was contagious and I couldn’t help but mirror her anxiety. I was helping her to wipe down our doorknobs, restocking the hand sanitiser and pinching my brother’s ears every time he tried to play with the neighbour’s kid.
In between all this, I simply did not have the energy to touch myself. This was made worse by the fact that despite my family’s best efforts, we caught COVID. The entire experience was demoralising. We had tried to do everything right yet here I was, faced with the possibility that these could be the last moments I spent with my high-risk parents. I doubled my efforts at cleaning. My attitude towards hygiene became obsessive, unnecessary and draining.
COVID-19 led to a massive change in everyone’s lifestyle and our active avoidance of germs throughout the pandemic, though necessary, has undoubtedly left many of us feeling even more anxious about germs and contamination. Among those who are predisposed to anxiety, there’s been a recorded increase in obsessions and associated compulsions.
My libido, which had been very active before the pandemic, had disintegrated and I was desperate to have it back. I wanted to feel like I had some control over this bizarre situation so I forced myself to masturbate. My first orgasm in four months was toe-curling and I had a huge smile on my face as I came down from my high.
It felt good, really good, so my tears came as a surprise to me. Why was I crying? This was something I wanted, something I’d been praying for. But this terrible voice in my head kept asking if I’d washed my hands before I began. I knew I had but the thought had been planted and I struggled to uproot it. The shortness of breath came and in my panicked state I imagined my vagina rotting because I didn’t care enough not to get germs in her. I calmed down a few minutes later but the panic attack really scared me so I decided that I wouldn’t touch myself for a while. Of course that decision didn’t make me feel better.
“When we rely on avoidance to reduce our anxiety, we do not give ourselves a chance to learn that we can tolerate our anxiety. We also continue to believe that the things we are avoiding are unsafe in some way,” says Alissa Jerud, licensed clinical psychologist and host of the Anxiety Savvy Podcast. “Our habit of avoiding gets stronger each time we avoid. Over time, we may find ourselves avoiding more and more, thus fuelling our anxiety in the long run and causing our worlds to continue to shrink.”
It’s been a year since I made that decision not to touch myself and I’ve gone on to have numerous orgasms since then. They’ve all been self-inflicted and not nearly as satisfying. Things are still not the way they were and I doubt they ever will be. I haven’t had sex in approximately six months and I haven’t had good sex for even longer. The last time I tried, I bawled in my partner’s bathroom for an hour nonstop because: What if his penis was dirty? It was irrational, partly because we’d had a bath together, but it was enough to put me off sex. There’s nothing like a panic attack and a terrified man to kill your libido.
I’ve realised that I shouldn’t have an identity crisis because I couldn’t have sex for a while. Why did I feel like I needed to jump back into having sex right after lockdown eased? The obsession with ‘going back to normal’ wasn’t healthy and I needed to address that. I felt like a child again, taking baby steps and trying to relearn intimacy.
My hypersexuality told me that I needed to be the wild, sexual person I was before the pandemic. But I don’t have to be her anymore. I can be the girl who doesn’t remember how to kiss people or touch herself. The girl who’s trying to figure out if she still likes the stuff she used to like. I can have fun rediscovering myself – and I have been.
Sexual chemistry used to be (and still is) such an important part of my attraction to a person but I’ve realised that there are other forms of intimacy and I am focused on building those first. It was easy to forget that I exist outside of the virus and that all the decisions I make don’t need to revolve around it. As long as I’m being safe, I can kiss people without feeling like I’m betraying myself.
It’s impossible to tell how this will play out for me in the future but Alissa says that fear of germs has the potential to negatively impact the mental health and wellbeing of our society. “The avoidance that this fear pulls for could easily lead to an unravelling of the social connections that we are wired to create. The more we – as a society – allow these fears to shape our post-pandemic lives, the wider their ripples will be.”
It’s a little bit hard finding my groove and going back to having sex but I’m having fun while I relearn it. I’m not the same person I was pre-pandemic, and that’s fine.
For many people over the past year and a half, every social event—hugging a relative, eating with a friend—has become a complex and sometimes-awkward dance. They’ve determined their safety needs and wants, then verbalized them to others. They’ve had to ask permission for more things, after considering other people’s comfort and boundaries. Whether people have realized it or not, everyday pandemic-era interactions have frequently turned into consent conversations.
At its most basic level, consent is at least two people agreeing about what they’re going to do together, Dorian Solot, who co-founded the sex-education organization Sex Discussed Here!, told me. We might most often associate consent with sex, and for good reason: Consent is crucial in all sexual interactions. (In some states, explicit “affirmative consent” is the legal standard for all public colleges and universities.) Still, Julia Feldman, who runs the sex-education consultancy Giving the Talk, told me that when consent is taught in sex education, it is sometimes presented as “a hoop to jump through.”
But consent factors into every aspect of our social lives. It is not a transaction. It’s an honest, deliberate, ongoing dialogue about how everyone can have their needs met—a key element of healthy sexual and nonsexual relationships. It is, essentially, good communication. People have long had these conversations, whether asking if they can use someone’s restroom or requesting that a guest take off their shoes indoors. Violations of consent are unfortunately common too: someone touching a person’s hair or pregnant stomach, say, without permission.
For those abiding by safety guidelines, the coronavirus pandemic has meant even more daily choices about what kind of consent they give and request. People have needed to disclose elements of their personal life, such as vaccination status, having immunocompromised family members, or recent exposures to the virus. They’ve had to ask others whether they’ve gone to clubs or weddings or have traveled recently. And some might have had to withhold agreement to a handshake or attending a birthday party. (The fact that COVID safety measures have become a politicized issue hasn’t made matters any easier.)
Calling these interactions consent conversations could feel unfamiliar. In part, this might be because many Americans are unfamiliar with the concept in any context. In the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute, just 39 states and the District of Columbia require sex education, and within those, only nine require lessons about the importance of consent. A Planned Parenthood study published in 2016 showed that among 2,012 adults, only 14 percent reported that they’d learned how to ask for consent, 16 percent had learned how to give consent, and 25 percent had learned how to say no to sex.
Even before the pandemic necessitated mask wearing or six-foot distances, Feldman, Solot, and other sex educators advocated for earlier education about consent in all relationships, beyond the realm of sex. “I think when people hear, like, ‘Oh, you do consent education with kindergartners,’ they assume I’m doing sex education and I’m talking about sex. And I’m not,” Monica Rivera, the director of the Women and Gender Advocacy Center at Colorado State University who also consults on consent education in K–12 schools, told me. “What I’m attempting to do is to get us as a culture to disentangle the topic of consent from sex, so that it becomes a part of the air we breathe.” She noted that adults might create situations that “unintentionally undermine” consent in interactions with children; a common example is when adults expect kids to give hugs to family members or friends.
Rivera said she has observed how the pandemic has brought consent conversations more intentionally into people’s day-to-day interactions. “The pandemic has forced us to talk about consent in a way that’s not about sex and is sometimes about our closest friends,” she said. But talking about consent with close friends can feel trickier. “The second we’re talking about the people in our immediate circles, that’s where we tend to have defensiveness about somebody wanting to set a boundary or social pressure,” Rivera said.
Solot told me that consent conversations have the potential to “drive a wedge” between friends and relatives who take differing levels of COVID precautions, or none at all. “We all make those risk decisions and, in day-to-day pre-pandemic life … we didn’t have to worry about it too much,” she told me. “Now we’re all forced to confront it all the time, which is both wonderful for relationships in terms of more communication but can also be really stressful.”
Asking about your friends’ vaccination status or requesting that they wear a mask in your house, however, can help lay the groundwork for a culture in which people feel more empowered to say what they’re comfortable with, Rivera told me. In a situation where consent is communicated, she explained, “when someone is having an interaction—whether it is having lunch on a patio or having sex with someone—that someone is doing it because they want to be doing it and they’re doing it in the context in which they feel safe.” Marshall Miller, who co-founded Sex Discussed Here! with Solot, told me that ultimately, when all parties agree on what they consent to—say, that they should be vaccinated before hanging out—they build reserves of trust for future interactions.
When the pandemic eventually subsides, experts predict that people who have exercised their “consent muscle”—as Solot calls it—will have a chance to rethink the norms of social behavior, such as “having the expectation be one of personal space and less physical touch unless it’s invited, which is a good thing overall,” Miller told me. Solot said she hopes the norm of defaulting to the boundaries of the most cautious person can be applied in contexts other than COVID safety. “If one person wants to use a condom, then use a condom,” Solot explained. “If one person feels uncomfortable with the situation, it doesn’t matter if you feel okay about it.”
Keeping in mind different levels of power and privilege is also crucial. Consent conversations among friends, for example, are very different from ones that might happen in the workplace. “Part of the skill of infusing consent into our everyday lives is being able to do a power analysis,” Rivera said. She gave the example of a boss and an upset employee. Instead of the supervisor saying “Can I hug you?” they might ask “Would you like a hug?” “It’s such a subtle shift in language, but it allows someone the ability to say no differently,” Rivera said.
In many cases, consent conversations will likely continue to be daunting, clumsy, and difficult. “It’s awkward in a COVID context. I think it will remain awkward in a sexual context,” Solot said. Perhaps, though, the pandemic has created an opportunity to push through that discomfort. An ever-present public-health threat has necessitated a daily process of empathizing with all the ways other people might feel uncomfortable, or even unsafe, and explicitly communicating about them. The pandemic has been a crash course in respecting people’s boundaries. But we should have been doing this all along.
Post-pandemic Sex: Many of us are unsure how to navigate relationships in what feels like a new world
The basic tips still hold true including practicing safe sex by using condoms and birth control.
By Geraldine Walsh
Along with indoor dining and international travel, sex is due to make a comeback as the summer of love apparently, belatedly, unfolds around us. The forward-moving vaccination programme brings hope for a normal life.
Post-pandemic sex and relationships, however, appear to have undergone a significant shift, depending on the age group, but how our post-pandemic sexual behaviour will pan out is not all that easy to predict.
There is a disparity in how we have experienced intimate relationships over the past 18 months. There were those of us in committed relationships who witnessed a rising stress culminating in a low sex drive brought on by the upside-down world. Many entered the pandemic as singletons and are now exiting while still single having missed out on a couple of years of flirtations with the potential of cementing long term relationships.
We’re not expecting a sexual revolution as such, but the effect the opening of society will have on relationships means adjusting not only our expectations but our practices
The crisis cut short liaisons which were never given a chance and, after living in limbo for too long, dating is back on the cards filled with an added anxiety. And there are the teenagers who are now in their twenties and, well, are raring to go with the potential for casual sex to make a 1920s roaring return.
We’re not expecting a sexual revolution as such, but the effect the opening of society will have on relationships means adjusting not only our expectations but our practices. With both the physical and emotional effects of post-pandemic sex likely to come to the fore as we eventually drop statistics on intimacy, it’s safe to say the pandemic has not been conducive to a healthy fulfilling sex life for many of us, single or not. The issue for many now is how to navigate not only new relationships but those sticky sexual exploits in what feels like a new world.
What about physical first dates?
“People are emotionally fatigued with online dating, the chatting, texting, being ghosted and the emotional whirlwind that comes with romantic first encounters online with potential love interests,” says Orlagh Gahan, couples and relationship psychotherapist. “Not having the opportunity to physically date all through lockdown has left many singletons isolated. We are going to see a huge boom in traditional real live dating again with more and more people moving towards professional matchmaking services.”
Gahan is conscious of the overwhelming emotional burden caused by dating websites, particularly for those committed to finding real love. She suggests we be ourselves as much as possible on dates.
“Arrange morning and daytime dates around hobbies and interests you both enjoy,” says Gahan, “or new experiences which will bring out your natural persona rather than dates focused on alcohol and the pub culture. Keep first dates short, but long enough that you give each other time to come out of your shell and loosen up. Romance and chemistry can take time to develop, and first dates are pressurised situations so go with your gut and intuition.”
What about intimacy anxiety?
“The intensity of emotions, fatigue, anticipatory grief can obviously affect our sex drive and all types of romantic intimacy,” says Gahan. “Many of us are in a state of recuperation meaning it will take time to readjust. A sex positive approach promotes proactively addressing blocks associated with body image, sex, intimacy and sexual health, fears and anxieties around sex while also learning more about the subject. When we feel good and positive about ourselves we are naturally more open to connection and in turn romantic intimacy.”
A pandemic addition to our intimate connections and potential intimacy anxiety is disease anxiety. There are those of us who are innately concentrated on how Covid-19 can find its way into the bedroom with lab tests showing SARS-COV-2 has been found in saliva, faecal matter, and semen. The anxiety can be so overwhelming that some are holding off until the pandemic is over to get frisky, which at this stage is a guess at best. Instead of waiting, ground rules can help alleviate the anxiety.
The awkward conversation in an early relationship doesn’t always make for great foreplay but the longer we keep our opinions silent, the harder it may be approach them. Gahan suggests we don’t be afraid to have real in-depth conversations about sex at the beginning of a relationship as “couples can benefit from talking about sexual intimacy, consent, values, sexual health and attitudes about sex and relationships.”
What about low libido?
Low libido is a common occurrence with the overreaching anxiety brought about by the pandemic. But the truth is there are many different factors which affect libido and the desire for intimacy including relationship health.
“We need to move beyond the overly simple and disempowering concept that libido is either high or low,” says Gahan, “and cultivate a mindset more focused around sexual health and healthy sexual attitudes, understanding and practicing what it means and feels like to be a sexually healthy human being with the understanding that libido fluctuates.
“I would encourage people, particularly women, to educate themselves about the different aspects of sexual intimacy, sexual health, and also the very curious and intriguing arousal process. Get to know your own body and build on body confidence, learn about romantic intimacy, and find safe empowering ways to talk openly and honestly about how you feel about sexual intimacy.
To improve your libido, get sex positive, talk about feelings, fears, and needs around sex, understand intimacy at a deeper level, feel good about your body again, get out and exercise and feel fun and joy in simple things, love and look after your body and you will feel more comfortable bonding with your partner.”
What about practising safe sex?
The rules of safe sex have not changed because of a pandemic. They may have shifted however as we are more conscious of who we hook up with considering the risk of Covid-19 transmission in unvaccinated people remains relatively high. It is as vital as ever to take precautions when starting a sexual relationship to protect yourself from STIs, HIV and unplanned pregnancy. See sexualwellbeing.ie for more info.
Talk:
Have the conversation. Talk to your partner about whether or not they have tested positive for STI’s. Discuss safe sex practices and sexual history. Have a chat about consent, and help each other understand your comfort-levels, boundaries, and your likes in the bedroom.
Test:
Get tested if you have any symptoms of sexually transmitted infections. Contact your local STI clinic or GP. In today’s world, add in a Covid-19 test if you have any coronavirus symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, fever, or changes to your sense of smell or taste. and self-isolate from your partner if possible.
Act:
Practice safe sex by using condoms and birth control. Avoid alcohol or drugs which can inhibit our awareness and result in high-risk sex. Keep an eye on your body and that of your partners for any changes such as a rash, sore, blister, or discharge which may indicate an infection.
Contrary to myths circulating on social media, COVID-19 vaccines do not cause erectile dysfunction and male infertility.
What is true: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, poses a risk for both disorders.
Until now, little research has been done on how the virus or the vaccines affect the male reproductive system. But recent investigations by physicians and researchers here at the University of Miami have shed new light on these questions.
The team, which includes me, has discovered potentially far-reaching implications for men of all ages – including younger and middle-aged men who want to have children.
Some men who had the COVID-19 virus might experience diminished sperm production and fertility.
The result: COVID-19 virus appeared in the tissues of one of the men; decreased numbers of sperm appeared in three.
Another patient – this one survived COVID-19 – had a testis biopsy about three months after his initial COVID-19 infection cleared up. The biopsy showed the coronavirus was still in his testicles.
Our team also discovered that COVID-19 affects the penis. An analysis of penile tissue from two men receiving penile implants showed the virus was present seven to nine months after their COVID-19 diagnosis. Both men had developed severe erectile dysfunction, probably because the infection caused reduced blood supply to the penis.
Notably, one of the men had only mild COVID-19 symptoms. The other had been hospitalized. This suggests that even those with a relatively light case of the virus can experience severe erectile dysfunction after recovery.
These findings are not entirely surprising. After all, scientists know other viruses invade the testicles and affect sperm production and fertility.
It is also known that mumps and Zika viruses can enter the testicles and cause inflammation. Up to 20% of men infected with these viruses will have impaired sperm production.
Early findings suggest neither the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine affects male fertility.
A new study on vaccine safety
Additional research by my team brought welcome news. A study of 45 men showed the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines appear safe for the male reproductive system.
This, then, is another reason to get the vaccinations – to preserve male fertility and sexual function.
Granted, the research is only a first step on how COVID-19 might affect male sexual health; the samples were small. Studies should continue.
Still, for men who have had COVID-19 and then experienced testicular pain, it is reasonable to consider that the virus has invaded testes tissue. Erectile dysfunction can be the result. Those men should see a urologist.
I also believe the research presents an urgent public health message to the U.S. regarding the COVID-19 vaccines.
One reason for vaccine hesitancy is the perception among many that COVID-19 shots might affect male fertility. Our research shows the opposite. There is no evidence the vaccine harms a man’s reproductive system. But ignoring the vaccine and contracting COVID-19 very well could.
The pandemic has affected our sex lives in many unusual ways, but perhaps none more unusual than this development: The coronavirus has highlighted the possible public-health benefits of glory holes. Sexual positions that make use of walls as physical barriers have long been considered niche. But when the New York City Department of Health recommended them last month as part of a push for safer sex, it tapped into a question that many of us have been asking: How do you seek sexual satisfaction during a global health crisis?
I haven’t had sex in more than a year, mostly because I took COVID-19 very seriously. I disconnected from the public sphere. No one visited my apartment. I disinfected my groceries and covered my apartment’s air vents with trash bags. As a queer person, I could barely register the idea of sex while living alongside a deadly virus that nobody really understood. One study published early in the pandemic showed that 43.5 percent of people reported a decrease in the quality of their sex life. Among study participants, they had fewer sexual encounters with other people, and even masturbated less often.
But queer and trans people have a rich history of pursuing pleasure, especially during dark times when that very pursuit is dangerous, even illegal. This drive stems from the fact that many queer and trans people—especially those of color—live under a kind of sociocultural duress in which our livelihoods and human rights are constantly subject to negotiation and popular debate, to say nothing of our physical safety. In spite of this reality, queer and trans people have innovated not by waiting for the future to “get better,” but by prioritizing the urgency of feeling pleasure right here, right now. So I knew that some of us would create novel pathways around the pandemic’s roadblocks to sex. I also knew that as the world reopened and Grindr profiles got fired up again, queer innovators would bring the kinks learned during quarantine into their post-vaccine encounters with other people.
In a time when touch has been so limited, some people have been moving toward a future full of bold new pleasures. Alex Jenny, a therapist based in Chicago, told me she joined a nude-sharing group chat, started an OnlyFans page, and began having sex online. In Virginia, where I live, one friend sauntered over to a lover’s doorstep one night wearing a mask and nitrile gloves, picked up a Speedo sealed in a ziplock bag, went home to do a photoshoot in the swimwear, and sent his beau the photos and videos. Many people are reimagining their own boundaries, thinking of this period of virtual intimacies, of distance and little physical contact, not as a lack but instead as a sort of edge play through sexual self-discovery.
For Julian Kevon Glover, an assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at Virginia Commonwealth University who’s writing a book about the nuances of nonmonogamy, that meant attending an online sex party with her primary partner. “[My partner and I] played on camera with a group of like-minded folk and it was much hotter than I ever expected,” she told me. “I’ve learned that queer people are and will always remain quite as horny, and we are inventive.”
Though the pandemic necessitated screen-based intimacy for some, queer people have always used the internet as a place to navigate their sexuality. During the late 1990s and into the early aughts, I spent more time than I care to admit navigating chat rooms on gay.com and Manhunt, where I pointed and clicked my way to some of my first sexual experiences. But I wasn’t looking only for sex. Growing up as a Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, during the era of frosted blond tips, white-seashell necklaces, and Abercrombie & Fitch, I was hoping to connect with anyone who could help me not feel so alone. The researcher David F. Shaw talked about this form of online intimacy, or “computer-mediated communication,” as the “uncharted territories of cyberspace where men sit alone at their keyboards producing and inscribing themselves within interactive texts of homosexual desire and need.” Historically, gay online forums have been so widespread that a 1994 Wired top-10 list noted that of the most popular chat rooms created on AOL, three were for gay men, one was for lesbians, and one was for swingers.
Part of the reason queer sex thrives online is because of the internet’s covert nature. Prior to the web’s easy anonymity, queer people had to seek sly ways to court sex in front of other people without being detected. The hanky code of the ’70s and ’80s, an elaborate system of discreet communication wherein people put different colored hankerchiefs in their right or left pockets to indicate sexual interests, allowed queer people to speak about kink in plain sight without words. Craigslist, which most people know as a place to find an apartment or a piece of furniture, was for many queer people a vibrant place to find sex before the Fight Online Sex Trafficking and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Acts of 2018. The list of ways to hook up goes on: sultry personal ads in the back pages of gay publications such as XY and Têtu, dating sites such as Grindr, and now, the Zoom sex parties of the coronavirus era.
These arenas have facilitated cultural practices that the anthropologist Shaka McGlotten calls “virtual intimacies,” or feelings of connection mediated by communication technology. I was amazed by how swiftly queer nightlife and sex worlds moved to Zoom, but Aurora Higgs, a queer Ph.D. student, artist, and performer from Richmond, Virginia, says that the required shift to online events ended up feeling more liberating than in-person shows. In Virginia, liquor laws limit activity in mixed-beverage establishments, including how much skin dancers can show, which clothing items can be removed, and how dancers can remove them. But the brilliant thing about online burlesque, Higgs told me, was that there was no bar. “We were able to do stuff we weren’t able to do before, things like nudity,” she said. “It was interesting to see how people were utilizing their own spaces at home to dip us further into the fantasy.”
Higgs told me that she plans to start a website where she can do cam work and online kink photography. “As a Black trans woman, I sometimes feel like everyone has access to my sexuality but me. I’m expected to be passively content at the end of a violent gaze, with little opportunity to turn my gaze on to others or on myself,” she said. With camming and virtual shows, “the gaze that normally violates me is temporarily being used at my discretion.”
Even though sex can now take place in real life again for some, many queer and trans people—who have long dealt with the reality of HIV/AIDS—must navigate transparency about sexual health with the added complication of COVID-19. Trust is the currency that will shape how queer and trans people approach hooking up in a post-vaccine summer, Ayo Dawkins, an artist from Virginia, told me. “Not that I trusted everyone I was with pre-pandemic,” they said. “But I knew sex wouldn’t kill you. You have condoms to protect you from STDs and STIs, and you have Truvada (PrEP) to protect you from HIV, but nothing could protect you from COVID aerosols.” Today, with new questions to ask about sexual-health statuses, some queer people may favor a more curated approach to sex that relies heavily on closed sexual networks.
In many ways, the past year and a half of sexual distancing, online intimacy, and exploration of pleasures has been a rehearsal for a yet-to-be-imagined queer sexual ecosystem. One of my favorite passages from the book Cruising Utopia, by the theorist José Muñoz, reads: “Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer … Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present,” which is to say that queerness might be the longing for a better world to come. I always say that creativity and innovation stem from the margins, from those who are resisting the kind of flattened human experience that comes from being denied access. If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s how to foreground the importance of feeling as a means of survival.
The coronavirus pandemic flipped the dating world upside-down. Instead of the traditional after-work drink, singles experimented with virtual dates and masked walks. Any physical touch, even a hug, required a conversation first. Many daters self-quarantined for weeks just to have a meal inside with someone.
It was a lot of work, but those rigid covid-19 dating rules did provide a framework for seeking romance during a pandemic.
Now that about half of American adults are fully vaccinated, the traditional in-person first date is returning and many of us are clueless. “How to date” was the most searched phrase in D.C. last week, according to Google. Nationally, searches related to how to date are at a five-year high.
Is the video date still necessary? How do you seem interesting on a first date after being confined to the couch for the past 16 months? Is it okay to ask about someone’s vaccine status?
We spoke with singles and dating experts about how to adapt what we learned from covid dating to the new normal. Here are seven tips for getting back out there.
1. Virtual dates are still a thing. Even though she’s vaccinated and bars are open again, Julia Capeloto, a 39-year-old marketing executive in San Francisco, still insists on video dates before most in-person meetups. It helps her gauge someone’s personality and whether there’s physical attraction. That’s one pandemic habit she’s keeping.
“Before covid, I wasted my time on so many bad first dates,” Capeloto says. Lately, there have been “far fewer bad first dates because I’ve been able to talk to them before.”
2. Be upfront with your date and slow down. Having honest conversations with a potential partner has always been important, but the pandemic made such talks even more essential. Capeloto has noticed that her matches are more upfront about what they are seeking — a relationship, something casual or undecided. She’s found that directness refreshing and hopes it will stick around.
Capeloto says covid dating has also taught her to slow down. “You don’t need to go on two dates in one week with someone new. Take your time, get to know them,” she says. “At the end of the date, think about: Do I want to see this person again or am I just lonely and I want some companionship?”
3. Find a way to talk about your values. During the pandemic, asking how seriously someone was taking the coronavirus and social distancing rules gave us a shortcut to assess whether our values meshed. Some daters may feel lost without such clear litmus tests.
Alison Wellington, a dating and relationship coach in Brooklyn, suggests making a list of what you’re looking for in partner — no more than six nonnegotiable character traits. “If you don’t have a clear vision as to what you’re looking for in a partner, it’s going to be difficult for you to find it,” Wellington says.
Before a date, think about how to judge if someone has the qualities you’re looking for. If you’re seeking someone family-oriented, for example, Wellington suggests asking your date about their childhood, or how often they see or talk to their family
And conversations about vaccination status and covid anxiety are still relevant, she says. Even if both parties are vaccinated, Wellington says, it’s still a good idea to ask about what precautions your date still takes against the coronavirus. Basic questions about whether someone prefers indoor or outdoor dining “speak volumes to this person’s ability to be respectful and thoughtful with this person’s boundaries,” she said.
4. Keep the work talk to a minimum. Long before covid, matchmakers often emphasized that dates shouldn’t feel like networking dinners. After all, you’re auditioning someone for the role of romantic lead, not head of marketing. “If you start to go career-y on your dates, you’re friend-zoning. You’re taking the sex out. You want to talk about other things, like travel, hobbies and interests,” Patti Stanger, former host of the Bravo reality show “The Millionaire Matchmaker,” said in an interview. Try asking someone about the last book they read, concert or comedy show they attended — or what kinds of things they do with their friends. That way you can learn about the rest of their life, the part you might be spending with them.
5. Be curious about your date. Logan Ury, the director of relationship science at Hinge, has a motto: “Be interested, not interesting.” A lot of people try to entertain their dates by telling their funniest stories or talking about the cool trips they’ve been on. “But good dates are about connecting with another person, not showing off,” Ury writes in her book “How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love.” Ury suggests being an active listener, which can make somebody feel “interesting, desired and appreciated.”
How do you do that? Aim for “support” responses, Ury said in an interview, rather than returning the focus of the conversation back to you. If your date adopted a puppy during the pandemic, for example, ask why they chose the breed they did, or how the puppy training went — instead of telling them how badly you want a pooch. “By asking those support responses,” Ury says, “that person gets to dig into their own responses and that makes them feel really good in a conversation.”
6. Go ahead and be vulnerable on a first date. The heaviness of the pandemic had a way of stripping away any pretenses, making it harder for people to hide their true selves and easier to be open about their struggles.
This reporter has channeled that vulnerability into post-vaccinated dating. Recently on a first date, I erupted into tears over margaritas and appetizers — emotional spillover from a tough conversation I’d had earlier that day. My date handled it like a champ, moving to a seat closer to me, taking my hand and encouraging me to let it all out. He barely knew me, and yet his response was mature, accepting and understanding. It was as if we had been together for months. By the time we said goodbye, we both knew we wanted see each other again.
Being vulnerable doesn’t have to involve bursting into tears. Try asking your date about their toughest moments or who they leaned on most during the pandemic. People want to find somebody they connect with, and “being vulnerable is the way that you establish intimacy, through reciprocal self-disclosure,” Lehmiller says, adding that such openness “makes it more likely that something is going to arise out of that.”
7. Follow up. Lately, I’ve received some extremely thoughtful post-date messages telling me that it was nice to meet but that we’re not a match.In fact, Hinge’s Ury says the dating app’s users have reported that ghosting appears to be down these days. Writing a kind and respectful text thanking someone for their time, and highlighting one positive thing you gleaned about them, honors the time and energy you both put into meeting up.
Harrison Forman, a 29-year-old comedian and producer in New York, knows how it feels to be ghosted, so if he’s sensing a “friend vibe” after a first date, he politely makes that clear. The dating scene feels more direct these days, Forman says, with a no-loose-ends energy in the air. “You can’t come out of covid and live the same life.”
Welcome to the summer of love. The Whoring 20s, Shot Girl Summer, the smell of meat and lotion. A bus passed by yesterday, its side painted with an advert encouraging passersby to “vax, wax and relax”. The new sexual revolution is here, and all it took was a deadly pandemic and a year indoors. It’s true, it’s coming, look, there!
Big women swaggering through a pollarded boulevard, feeling themselves like they’ve never feeled before, suited men singing soul songs under their breath, teenagers standing so close they’re talking in each other’s voices. There’s a picnic by the swings where someone has served themself with mayonnaise on a soft baguette. In the supermarket, women stand mesmerised by the erotic hum of a freezer, and someone inhales the cut flowers with a heavy-lidded smile, and a man gruffly counts peaches. A parking attendant kisses his own lips, the tune of an ice-cream van sounds drunk and yearning. When did everyone get a body? When did everyone descend from the live-work space of their minds and knock through to the basement of those hips, that hair?
Yes, sex is back. For a while there it was touch and go whether it would survive the night, having evolved, devolved over the years into a new kind of touchless touch, many young people choosing to pursue relationships online rather than on sofas. But now, having had time to consider our futures, time to swipe our phones with thrice-washed hands and a new professional grade level of attentiveness, having come to new realisations about touch, loneliness, the pandemic-imposed limits of our new lives and the self-imposed limits of our old ones, the world is ready for its return.
For some, this will simply mean more. It will mean stepping out of the house, a prick in each arm and another in the thigh for luck, and slipping straight into a stranger’s dress, a colleague’s bathroom, the idling Volvo of a dad waiting for the end of Year Six streetdance. Good luck to you comrades, congratulations. But for many, the end of our lockdowns will result in a different kind of sex. New kinks have bred in isolation – a genre of Covid porn is thriving on certain laptops, and fantasies are feverish and confused, dystopian, dreamlike. The danger of touch, the forbidden thrill of brushing past an ungloved wrist, masks no longer only for the unvanilla – sex has changed shape. As has dating. Those months on apps, when people were forced to engage in different kinds of communication beyond just meeting in a bar and thinking this’ll do, are (according to a report Cosmopolitan commissioned from the Kinsey Institute) leading to more considered interactions. They predict “the death of the one-night stand”, and a grand move away from destructive dating habits, towards more experimentation, more thoughtful commitments, more pleasure, and fewer people settling for less – a whole resetting of sexual expectation.
Of course, for many of us, it won’t be easy. Not because we’re not sexy and attractive. No, not that at all. We are all insanely attractive right now actually, thank you, incredibly soft and awkward in our beauty. Everyone is gorgeous and no one is OK. So it will be difficult in the way that all attempts at resocialising are difficult, as we step gingerly into the wild, looking backwards with a scared and red-eyed wonder before trotting cautiously towards the trees. How does a “kiss”, what is to “sex”, who is “hand”, a whispered hiss of questions will echo around the clubs at 2am, two people will insist on time-outs during dinner, just to quickly revise the rules about what is meant to happen next.
The trick will be to weaponise this awkwardness, and transform it into a series of exquisite tensions. It is a chance to be naive again, to purr as a person presses your back like a cat on Instagram or a David Attenborough cub. People are excited simply to sit across from a person they admire, simply to pull the window closed or wetly kiss their cheek – each drop of this excitement must be noted, harnessed and claimed as adorable. There will be people who want to lie fully clothed on top of the covers and breathe at each other. There will be people who want to use all the knowledge accrued from twice-daily Zoom meetings to direct erotic films with high production values and a plotline about office politics. There will be people who unload all the therapy they’ve had across the year on to their partner’s bed and roll around on it. There will be someone for everybody, once they’ve worked out how to say hello, I like you.
It’s going to be a good summer. It’s going to be an interesting summer, with moments of pain, and the sometimes bastard thoughts that make us human. It’s going to be hot, but in ways that occasionally burn, a humid bewildering kind of heat. It’s going to be the summer of complicated, radical, ageing, queered, distanced, unlikely love. Welcome, enjoy, and please wash your hands.
Researchers continue to learn more about COVID-19’s long-term impact on our bodies. Now they’re looking into the link between the virus and erectile dysfunction (ED). That’s when a person has a hard time getting or keeping their penis firm enough to have sex.
What’s Causing It?
Researchers think three things may trigger ED in COVID-19 survivors:
Cardiovascular problems. ED can be an early sign of heart disease. Research also shows COVID-19 can affect heart health. That’s because it can lead to inflammation in various parts of your body. This includes your heart and the blood vessels and veins nearby.
COVID-19 has also been linked to endothelial dysfunction. That’s when the inner lining or wall of blood vessels stays stiff instead of expanding and contracting to allow blood flow. This can affect how blood is pumped and carried through your body, including tissue in the penis. Disrupted blood supply to your penis can make it difficult to get or keep an erection.
Mental issues. COVID-19-related stress, anxiety, and depression can also impact sexual health and possibly lead to ED.
Poor overall health. Experts say ED is usually a symptom of another medical condition. If your health isn’t great to begin with, you’re more likely to have severe or unwanted symptoms from COVID-19, such as ED.
Older age can also increase your risk for both ED and a severe form of COVID-19 infection.
What’s the Evidence Behind It?
One study found that people infected with the virus were more than 5 times more likely to develop ED. In another small study, researchers took penis tissue samples from two men who’d been infected with COVID-19. One had had severe symptoms, the other mild. The samples were taken before both men had surgery for severe ED symptoms. The scientists found COVID-19 viral particles and endothelial dysfunction long after the two men first had their infections.
It’s still too early to know for sure what the long-term effects of the virus are on sexual and reproductive health.
What Can You Do?
ED as a side effect of COVID-19 can be short- or long-term. But experts aren’t not sure if these complications can lead to issues with fertility.
Tell your doctor right away if you think you have ED, especially after a COVID-19 infection. They’ll ask about your medical history and give you a physical exam. They might also order lab tests or refer you to a urologist. That’s a doctor who specializes in treating problems in the male reproductive tract. They’ll figure out what’s causing your ED and come up with a treatment plan.
Experts recommend getting the COVID-19 vaccine to lower your risk of ED as a side effect.
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.
The multiple stressors of the pandemic have diminished partners’ desire to have sex
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.
As they meet new people and date, many singles have acknowledged that ‘digital intimacy’ is important during the pandemic
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.
Along with individuals, some couples are also exploring outlets for online sexual interaction
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.”
Virtual boudoir parties have drawn groups from around the world and across different demographics
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.”
As we creep back toward normal, what should we do about the rise of sexually transmitted infections?
By Peggy Orenstein and Ina Park
Dr. Hilary Reno’s eyes widened as she scanned the waiting room at the St. Louis County Sexual Health Clinic in Missouri, where she’s the medical director. She was used to seeing a swath of humanity parked in those plastic chairs: middle-aged men secretly screening after a tryst; college students making a post-hookup pit stop; teenagers, fresh in love, testing together before taking the next step. But now, in the spring of 2019, every seat was filled, with more patients leaning up against the walls. “How,” she thought to herself, “can we possibly keep up?”
This week, in its annual S.T.D. Surveillance Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed what physicians like Dr. Reno already suspected: that 2019, the most recent year for which data was collected, would set a record for reported cases of sexually transmitted infections. In 2018, an estimated one in five Americans had an S.T.I.; that’s about 68 million people. At least 26 million new infections were contracted during 2019 alone. Chlamydia hit an all-time peak — St. Louis, as it happens, has historically led U.S. cities in cases — while gonorrhea and syphilis, along with congenital infections and newborn deaths, were at their highest rates since the early 1990s. The trends for syphilis are particularly striking, given that two decades ago, it was close to elimination.
For a while, it appeared that the pandemic lockdown might unintentionally ease the surging S.T.I. epidemic. While a few holdouts chose to manage their anxiety through sex with strangers rather than stress baking, most people hunkered down, socially and sexually distancing. And it wasn’t just Americans. Studies from Britain, Asia and Australia also found that Covid-19 dampened people’s sexual ardor: About 40 to 60 percent of adults reduced their number of partners; a similar percentage reduced the frequency of sex or abstained altogether. Instead, like everything from cocktail hours to corporate meetings, hookups went online. Tinder saw a record 3 billion swipes on a single day last March. Likewise, from March through May, OkCupid recorded a 700 percent increase in virtual dates.
But fear of contagion and death will depress libido for only so long. Just when quarantine fatigue began eroding sexual restraint, the urgent needs of Covid-19 gutted the country’s fragile infrastructure for S.T.I. control. Two-thirds of public sexual health clinics were forced to cut back their services or shut their doors in 2020, their staffs redeployed to the Covid-19 response — only one of New York City’s eight clinics remained open during the early months of the pandemic. Screenings were eliminated, follow-up of patients and their sex partners reduced.
Contract tracers, too, were reassigned to track coronavirus transmission, so attempts to reconstruct sexual networks — a major tool in reducing the spread of S.T.I.s — plummeted. The result? Delays in diagnosis, scarce access to treatment and the likelihood that we’ll keep racking up those astronomical transmission records, albeit without the same ability to document that it’s happening.
Infection rates are up across lines of race, gender and age (rates among the elderly have notoriously spiked in recent years), influenced in part by drug use, poverty, unstable housing and stigma. The C.D.C. has also cited decreased condom use, especially among gay and bisexual men and young people in general: Over half of new cases in the current report occurred among 15-to-24-year-olds. In fact, it’s one of the arenas in which our country truly excels — We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1! — at least among developed nations in rates of S.T.I.s.
It’s hard to imagine that status changing as the under-25 set is sprung from its Covid captivity. Recall that after the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the ’20s roared as a generation made up, Gatsby-like, for lost time. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and a professor of sociology at Yale, has already predicted a possible uptick in what he called “sexual licentiousness” by 2024. We wouldn’t be quite so judgy, and what’s more, partying never fully stopped during the pandemic. (Many college campuses were virus hot spots.) Still, it’s certainly plausible that once the masks come off, 21st-century youth will try to compensate for what they’ve missed by doubling down on party and hookup culture.
Their year of relative isolation has meant that much less practice with face-to-face communication, including negotiating intimate encounters and prioritizing safety. Nor, according to Lisa Wade, an associate professor of sociology at Tulane University who has interviewed over a hundred students on sexual behavior during the pandemic, are young adults grasping the connections between the questions they ask to avoid Covid and those they ought to be asking to protect their sexual health. What’s more, she found, even as they’re “extraordinarily compliant” about wearing masks, many do not use condoms, including those with multiple partners.
Those students may be singularly ill prepared to deal with the inevitable aftermath — how could they be, when we’ve failed to do what reputable studies have suggested for decades: provide them with high-quality sex education. That is exactly the solution proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services last year when it issued its first-ever S.T.I. National Strategic Plan for 2021-25. Among the main objectives is to support “a nonstigmatizing, comprehensive approach to sexual health education and sexual well-being, especially in adolescents and young adults.”
Sounds reasonable, right? Yet sex education in this country is still one of the most divisive of issues, ground zero of the culture wars. During that postpandemic heyday of the 1920s, crusaders for contraception were threatened with fines and imprisonment under Comstock laws that labeled their instructional pamphlets as both obscene and encouraging promiscuity. By the 1970s, after the pill and legalized abortion decoupled sex from reproduction — making the notion of waiting until marriage, or even adulthood, obsolete — sex ed became a vector for conservatives’ anxiety about the erosion of traditional matrimony, the rise of women’s rights, the growing acceptance of homosexuality, the potential dismantling of gender itself. In 1979, the Rev. Jerry Falwell created the Moral Majority, a forerunner of today’s far right, in part to combat sex education, which he claimed was “Soviet propaganda.”
That organization was widely credited with helping deliver the presidency to Ronald Reagan. Two years later, Mr. Reagan signed the first law funding programs that promoted abstinence until marriage as the expected standard. More than $2 billion has since been shoveled into the maw of abstinence-only education (more recently rebranded “sexual risk avoidance” education), mostly funding programs that have been proved ineffectual at either delaying vaginal intercourse or reducing risky sexual behavior. You know what does both? Curriculums that are not only comprehensive but also pleasure-based: built on the premise that sexual activity should feel good for everyone involved, rather than casting it as inherently dangerous or wrong.
We get that everyone is sick of hearing about the Dutch, but their version of sexuality education remains the ideal. It starts in kindergarten, though at that age the conversation is about friendship, family and love, not sex. As they progress, students learn about anatomy, reproduction disease prevention, contraception and consent; they also discuss relationships, masturbation, oral sex, orgasm, gender identity and same-sex encounters. (Openly addressing gay sex practices is especially important to avoid marginalization and to reduce the disproportionate S.T.I. rates among men who have sex with men.) Not only do young Dutch women — controlling for demographic differences — report feeling happier than Americans with their early experience, but those who have vaginal intercourse do so later, have fewer partners and are exponentially safer. The rate of gonorrhea among Dutch teenagers in 2006, for instance, was about 14 per 100,000 adolescents, compared with our nearly 459. Their rate of chlamydia was about 150 per 100,000 adolescents; ours was nearly 2,863.
In this country, 39 states and the District of Columbia mandate some form of sex education; 18 dictate that such classes be medically accurate. Maine is the sole state requiring schools to teach actual skills in both communication and “responsible decision-making regarding sexuality.” We’re sure those enlightened Mainers do their best, but it’s really too much to ask for them to be responsible for changing how young people nationwide navigate their sexual relationships.
As for the rest? They’re left to their own devices — literally. A nationally representative survey released in January found that among 18-to-24-year-olds, the most-cited “helpful source of information about how to have sex” with a partner was online pornography. That came out ahead of actually talking to your partner, especially among young men. Now imagine the Venn diagram of that report and the C.D.C. data on the same age group.
Obviously, President Donald Trump was never going to enact his own agency’s S.T.I. plan; his 2021 budget proposal included $75 million funding for those debunked sexual risk avoidance programs while eliminating all evidence-based teenage pregnancy prevention efforts. But maybe the Biden administration will do better, especially given its pledge to revisit its predecessor’s regulations on campus sexual misconduct: Among its other benefits, comprehensive sex education, when combined with instruction in refusal skills, appears to be significantly protective against assault in college.
Once the pandemic is finally behind us, Covid-driven funding for health department infrastructure and contact tracers should be maintained and redirected toward creating robust S.T.I. control programs in every state, including expanding access to publicly funded sexual health services. All of that would be politically contentious, but the alternative is to continue to sacrifice the health of tens of millions of young people: Untreated S.T.I.s can result in pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and cancer, and increase the risk of acquiring and transmitting H.I.V.
As vice president, Joe Biden helped initiate the It’s on Us campaign, aimed at reducing sexual assault. The administration’s next step should be, again, to reject the politicization of what is, in fact, an urgent health issue (especially in the era of internet access and hookup apps), cast off four decades of damaging abstinence-centered curriculums and adopt a proven, enlightened approach to young people’s education: one that is not exclusively focused on risk and danger, that promotes healthy sexual development and relationships — so we can ensure that, if they do choose to engage, they do so safely, responsibly, ethically and joyfully.
Lockdown significantly affected our health (for good and bad), our work and how we socialise. These consequences have been widely discussed, but far less attention has been given to the effect on our sex lives.
When lockdown came into force in the UK in March 2020, people from outside the same household were not allowed to meet indoors, and only at set distances outdoors. This meant that sex between people who didn’t live together was effectively criminalised.
In some ways, these restrictions disproportionately affected young adults, who are more likely than older adults to be exploring their sexuality and developing romantic relationships. But the impact of lockdown on people’s sexual desires and sex lives and how this affected their sense of wellbeing was not known. We decided to find out.
For our study, we surveyed 565 people aged 18-32 in the UK at the end of peak lockdown restrictions in May 2020. People were recruited using a survey recruitment site. They were a convenience sample, meaning they were people who were easily available rather than representative of the population as a whole.
Respondents were asked if they engaged in a list of sexual activities both before lockdown and during lockdown. This included intercourse, solo masturbation, and watching pornography. They were also asked to rate their health and wellbeing.
The number of respondents who engaged in each of these activities during lockdown decreased compared with before lockdown. The biggest decrease was for sex with a partner, with just over a quarter of respondents stopping this activity during lockdown (25.5%).
For those participants who continued to engage in sexual activities, we also asked whether the frequency increased or decreased during the period. There were both increases and decreases. Regarding increases, just over a quarter (26%) of people masturbated more often on their own, 20% reported having more intercourse with their partner, and 20% reported watching more pornography on their own.
Yet the same three sexual activities also decreased in frequency for some participants, with a third of people having less sex with their partner, a quarter masturbating alone less, and around a fifth (22%) watching less pornography alone.
People were more likely to report increases in sexual activity if they were male, in a serious relationship, and if they weren’t heterosexual.
We also investigated sexual desire. In our sample, women reported lower sexual desire than men overall, with a significant decrease in sexual desire during lockdown compared with before lockdown. Women with a greater enjoyment of casual sex reported a greater perceived effect of lockdown on their wellbeing.
Our findings, which are published in the Journal of Sex Research, support other reports into the effects of lockdown restrictions. Lockdown measures have disproportionately affected some groups more than others. The reported increase in domestic chores and stress for women during the lockdown may explain the decrease in sexual desire and the negative effect on wellbeing.
Moving out of lockdown
There are many health benefits, both physical and mental, to engaging in regular sexual activity. Sex can be an important component of people’s lives and their identity, particularly for sexual minorities.
There are other concerns about COVID-19 and sexuality. Most sexual health and reproductive services in the UK have been severely limited or closed. There is evidence that access to condoms and contraception was disrupted for young adults during social lockdown.
Some sexual health charities have been offering home testing kits of sexually transmitted infection screenings, but there will be people who do not or cannot use these services. Similarly, there is evidence that birth rates have dropped significantly over the year, which might lead to an associated large increase in births over the next 12 months once people see some stability returning to their lives.
As the UK follows the road map out of lockdown, it is important to consider how those whose sex lives have been restricted will respond to the extra freedom. It has been suggested that we could see a new “roaring 20s” as we return to a new sense of normality.
Government policy ignored sex during lockdown. It needs to actively support sexual health and wellbeing as we return to some kind of normality.
Being single throughout the first lockdown might not have been so hard if I hadn’t begun 2020 still very much in a couple. I still remember the Christmas card he gave me and the message he wrote inside: “I loved spending 2019 with you, looking forward to more in 2020 and beyond”. I so wanted that to be the case. But a month later we were both sat in the bedroom of his flat, faces red with tears and my case packed to leave for the last time. “Can we still see each other?” he asked, his eyes glistening with the naive hope of an adolescent. Yet his 35-year-old rational brain surely must have told him the answer. He knew we couldn’t. The reason for the split was as simple as it was life shattering. He said he wanted children, one day. Children that I had never dreamed of myself nor could ever give him, even if I wanted to.
They call it a deal breaker – the ultimate one, really, as there is no hope and no compromise – yet the expression makes heartbreak sound like a boardroom negotiation. It would be more accurate to say the relationship had a terminal illness and I chose to assist its death with dignity rather than let it carry on to an inevitable, but uglier, end years down the line. To me, it was a cataclysm that left me confounded by grief. Grief that felt more like physical pain for months. Months that, unfortunately, happened to coincide with a pandemic, which turned the other aspects of my life upside down, too.
“Now’s the time to get really good at wanking”, my also recently single friend Gemma says matter-of-factly over Whatsapp voice-note, as if masturbation was a skill like kayaking or getting a soufflé to rise, before adding, “and phone sex”. It’s the end of March 2020 and pressure is increasing on Boris Johnson to put the UK into a full lockdown. In the six weeks since my breakup, coronavirus has become a growing global disaster. The advice is clear: do not leave home, do not touch anyone, do not date, do not fuck.
Of course I can physically go without sex or dating – for the past six weeks I did just that. But I also told everyone that this was ‘actually fine’. Bragging constantly about a forthcoming summer of promiscuity was a lame attempt at a confidence trick on my own brain. In the immediate aftermath of my breakup, the idea of another man’s touch or his weight on mine truly seemed inconceivable and undesirable. Yet when this became officially illegal, I panicked.
In the year since the start of the first lockdown, single people have largely been ignored or erased in government communications about living with COVID restrictions. If, like me, you entered this pandemic single (or if you are in a couple where you don’t cohabit) sex has technically been illegal for most of it. There was a brief period where it was possible from July to October but any new relationship embarked upon during this time would need to have become exclusive and cohabiting within a matter of weeks to have survived the second wave. It’s safe to say most of us who went into this pandemic single still are and will be for some time to come.
Of course, no one actually thought it would go on this long. Most of the official advice a year ago wasn’t dissimilar to my friend Gemma’s – it was an era of Zoom dates, sex toys, phone sex and nudes, I was reassured by online magazines and sexual health charities all of whom sounded very upbeat about this new era of remote sexuality. Even a year ago, I sensed they were missing the point. Sex and dating, for the newly single me, were about reprising an old ritual of encountering other people in order to rebuild a coherent picture of myself as a sexual being.
It’s a common belief that any straight cis men who are titillated by the offer of sex with a transgender woman must be physically fetishising us. It’s an analysis I’ve always found tedious and reductive about what even the most casual encounters with strangers have taught me about people and about life. Some years ago, I anecdotally noticed that men on dating apps seemed much less bothered about the idea of being with a transsexual if they’d recently gone through a divorce or a long term relationship had ended. Their once imagined lives broken, they were hoping to see what a woman exiled from many heterosexual norms might have to teach them about their own failings. For years before I met my ex, I had gone “for drinks” with the sort of man who secretly hopes that by tasting my deviance, he’ll learn something more interesting about himself. It’s a vampiric exchange; a contract of heat and blood. I suppose last year I desperately hoped that the roles could be reversed. That, post breakup, with my own failed attempt at assimilating into heterosexuality, cis men might teach me about how to do normality better next time. That I would get to be the vampire.
I had taken the gamble to be single. I hadn’t chosen to be alone and bereft indefinitely.
Devoid of such luck, I instead spend significant parts of the first lockdown glued to Hinge and Tinder talking to people. In lieu of the ability to actually meet, I stay talking to men I may have previously swiftly turned down for a real date. I regale my friends who are bored with lockdown with stories of my improbable virtual interactions. At one point last summer, for example, I was talking to three different Army officers (don’t worry – different regiments!) despite the fact my politics are anti-imperialist enough to question if soldiers should even exist. When Vera Lynn died last June, my friend Huw cattily referred to me as “our very own Forces’ sweetheart” in the group chat.
At other times, the loneliness is too dark for jokes. Until things started to open up in July last year, I was tormented by memories of my ex flooding back to me in the hours, days and weeks spent alone in lockdown. His hand on the small of my back on a crowded tube platform, the time he rowed me around the Plaza España in Seville and I took the piss the whole time because being treated just like any other girl with a boyfriend on holiday was so unfamiliar, the specific way the cadence of his breath would change during sex, the way his face would melt into a disarming smile when I’d outsmarted him in a debate about some political point or other.
One criticism of government policy during the pandemic is that it has entrenched traditional norms in which only couples get the comfort of touch and intimacy. Having gone through the worst breakup of my life without even so much as a hug from a good friend or a gym class that promises to restore my self worth, it is inevitable that there have been moments in the past year I regretted my decision to leave my relationship. In breaking up with him, I had taken the gamble to be single and make room for another life, more suited to my own long term needs and desires. I hadn’t chosen to be alone and bereft indefinitely.
Given the pandemic’s side effect of reinforcing socially conservative romantic arrangements and aspirations, my rejection of my ex’s offer of precisely these things has also come back to haunt me at times. “You’re a transsexual and he was a tall, handsome, intelligent homeowner with great teeth: why the fuck did you do that?” my stimulus-starved brain started to bark at me. Sometimes, the queries were crueller: “Why don’t you want to be a mother anyway?”, the sadistic voice inside me asked. “Not much of a woman after all, you?”
I must first claw back the other parts of my life when this purgatory eventually ends.
Tired of second guessing my own judgement, I’ve given up on the pursuit of dating for now. It was brutal and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but, in the end, time did the work in healing me from my breakup – we have all lived with restrictions for so long my relationship with my ex now feels like it took place in a different age, a time of crowded bars and packed restaurants. I can exchange a brief text with him now or even visualise his future wife and kids and not feel the searing pain. I can be glad he has the space for his own future, too.
It’s not just time that’s helped: a brief late summer romance with a (slightly) younger man who unexpectedly slid into my DMs on Instagram managed to change my negative patterns of thinking about whether I’ll be alone forever: we didn’t work out long term but dating him showed me it may work with someone else. A second breakup, even if less intense, followed by a second lockdown, was a fucking chore. Again: no affirming spin class and no drinks with the girls. Since that whirlwind relationship ended so abruptly when we returned to lockdowns last autumn, the unsustainability of trying to build a serious relationship after all this solitude, anxiety and uncertainty has convinced me that I am not in the mindset to offer anyone else any kind of healthy relationship. I must first claw back the other parts of my life when this purgatory eventually ends.
The pandemic has shown single and coupled people alike that all relationships are practical things, built more on a mixture of chance, timing, proximity and long-term compatibility than they are on initial chemistry or sexual desire, which you can have with many people. I loved my ex-boyfriend so much that, at times a few years ago, he seemed like my only true happiness. But it was still right our relationship ended, as many have done during the pandemic for similar reasons: incompatibilities and insecurities were revealed with the removal of distractions and overexposure to one another.
In the year since lockdowns began, I have relied so heavily on remote support from my friends that my yearning for romantic reassurance has receded just as my need for in-person laughter and fun with my friends has grown to desperate levels. I long for the conviviality and spontaneity of the house party that runs until 6AM, the unplanned dinner out, the gossip and the sarcasm. After the hard work of surviving these lockdowns without friendship, how could the arduous work of building a lasting romantic love compete?
For years before I met the man I adored then had to leave, I would imagine meeting someone like him and the life we would build together. I would daydream about how such a man would smooth over every scratch and dent left in my spirit by the unenviable tasks of being trans and a woman in this world and make it stronger. Of course, I hope I’ll find love again after the pandemic but I no longer fantasise about the more fulfilled and resilient and powerful woman I’ll eventually turn into when I have it. Alone, I have already become her.
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