The 18 months that changed our sex lives forever
‘And then we got to tell complete strangers what to do – they’d do whatever we wanted while we watched them.’ A single friend in her early 40s is telling me about a recent online orgy she attended. Think masks, a roulette wheel and a series of non-virtual acts shared virtually…
‘Fantastic,’ I exclaim, but really I’m thinking about my own bedroom activity of late. Post-lockdown, my sex life has become confined to a platonic, three-way romance between me, my partner and our whippet.
As a ménage, we snuggle, we spoon, all three of us high on the bonding chemical oxytocin, but don’t exactly go at it. A recent attempt at a dirty weekend (sans hound) involved me felled by period pain, sleeping for 11 hours, then zombified by gloom. Action-packed, it wasn’t.
We’ve been together seven years, so our relationship wasn’t non-stop swinging from the chandeliers pre-Covid. However, it certainly wasn’t the quashed, comfort-seeking specimen it is now. Am I happy about this? Maybe.
I am flat, depressed, energyless, the prospect of going to bed with my two great loves is the genuine high point of my day. All three of us seem to crave this sensuous (sensory in the sexless, Miltonic sense), but not sensual (in the erotic sense) comfort.
I know that I am not alone. And nor, in fact, is my friend: single and coupled alike, countless women of my acquaintance report that their sex lives have ground to a halt post-lockdown or else gone to the opposite extreme and become more adventurous than ever. The pandemic has, it appears, polarised our sex lives.
Gill, a 57-year-old lawyer living in Bristol with her partner, says that her libido has all but disappeared since her grown-up children moved back in for lockdown: ‘The pandemic resulted in a permanently full nest of wakeful adults – not conducive! I had the house to myself for about 30 minutes over a period of a year and a half. We got out of the habit. The odd Airbnb night away [when lockdown eased] helped, but it seemed a faff.’
But, she adds, ‘For the first time as an adult, I don’t feel that I am a sexual being and that’s bought me time and headspace – something wonderfully freeing. I wonder if those pre-pandemic sex levels were inflated and, now we’ve become accustomed to less, for some of us, less is OK; or less is actually more?’
Clover Stroud, 46, a writer who is married and was previously the enthusiastic sex-toy tester at the Erotic Review, sighs, ‘I only wish I had something interesting to add… I’m not even masturbating, maybe due to having got used to five kids constantly being in the house.’
It’s not just older couples. Julia, 31, a tech manager from south London, is single and hasn’t had sex in almost 18 months. ‘I have no desire to do so. I would say tiredness, depression and body self-consciousness are at play, but that’s not it entirely. I still have the occasional “me sex” but no interest in bringing someone else into the picture.’
She points out that a lot of single women she knows had satisfying sex alone during lockdown. ‘Sex with another person takes more time, effort and hassle with no guarantee of pay-off. Many straight women had a prolonged time without the pressures of men and sex and have realised we don’t need them for fulfilment like we thought we did.’
In the first lockdown, there were predictions of a sex-crazed, post-Covid baby boom. Instead birth rates are falling – in the UK deaths now outnumber births for the first time in 40 years – plus there is a so-called ‘intimacy drought’, as a collective libido wilt took hold.
The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles Covid study – which began last March and surveyed 6,500 people aged 18-59 across Britain – found that people were more likely to say they’d had less sex since lockdown. Cases of newly diagnosed sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are also down by a third in England, a consequence of this changed behaviour.
Elsewhere, research conducted in America, Italy, Turkey and India in 2020 all points to a similar decline in sex, both with partner and solo acts, all of which is directly attributed to lockdown. ‘A big part of the reason is that so many people were too stressed out,’ reports Justin Lehmiller, social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute.
But it goes beyond stress and feeling tired. Tracey Cox, presenter of the SexTok podcast and an expert in sex and relationships, points out that Covid has been a long road – and is continuing to be so.
‘Sex that’s too available is completely unexciting,’ she explains. ‘Lockdown exacerbated all the usual problems with monogamy: boredom, routine, repetitive sex. Add other desire dampeners – like being with the same person 24/7, money worries and ramped-up anxiety – and our sex drives flattened.
‘Our excuse for not having sex is usually that we’re too busy. With more free time than we’ve ever had before, most couples had less sex than ever before. Sex is a habit. If you stop doing it, you lose desire for it.’
Still, those who are doing it appear to be having sex with ever more abandon. Historian Zoe Strimpel, author of Seeking Love in Modern Britain: Gender, Dating and the Rise of ‘the Single’, agrees that it is a polarised situation. ‘While couples may have felt stuck together, the death knell for sexiness, single people went nuts post-lockdown, making up for lost time.’ And with possible future lockdowns looming, a carpe diem attitude prevails.
There are the Zoom sex proponents, plus a rise in ‘teledildonic’ toys that can be operated via Bluetooth by someone else. A colleague jokes that, pre-pandemic, she could barely FaceTime, now she is a ‘multi-media sexual adventurer’. And there are those, like my friend, who are attending the myriad sex parties that opened up online. Many of these would never have considered such risqué sexual adventures pre-2020.
Georgia Di Mattos, 36, started attending sex parties with her husband six years ago, then last year she co-founded an STI-status app, iPlaySafe. ‘If, after lockdown, women’s sex lives are being polarised, I fall into the highly sexed category.’
She argues that there is nothing ‘extreme’ in using Zoom, going to sex parties, or using teledildonic toys to feel aroused. ‘Most of the women I know who are in happy and healthy relationships, with some sort of financial stability, used lockdown time to explore their sexuality and their sexual relationship further.
‘Women haven’t done so out of boredom, a sense of mortality, or pent-up lust, but because for the first time they had this precious commodity that they could use – time.’
There has, however, been a darker side to sex – and casual sex in particular – since the pandemic. Susie, 30, who works in finance, tells me that her one-on-one hook-ups, with men she meets on apps, have become disturbingly violent. ‘I’ve slept with several men who just want to hold me down as if I were some sort of sex doll,’ she says.
‘I’ve consented to sex, but not rough sex. One mocked me, and told me I wasn’t any good at it, when my legs weren’t able to bend, double-jointed, over the back of my head. It’s as if they’ve watched so much porn, they’re not used to actual humans, requiring ever rougher acts to get off.’
Strimpel explains that Covid has amplified what was already happening – unpleasant aspects included. ‘Sex has definitely been getting more extreme, with acts such as strangulation trickling down from pornography.’ Put this next to my post-pandemic sex life (or lack thereof) and Susie and I are not merely occupying different sexual landscapes, but different erotic planets.
However, given that a degree of normal life has returned, travel restrictions have lifted and many of us have returned to the office, why haven’t our bedroom habits snapped back to normal too? ‘There is no going back to “normal”,’ adds Di Mattos. ‘Covid is still part of our daily lives and the uncertainty of a new lockdown is very real. This affects the way we behave.’
Tracey Cox agrees that post-lockdown, a sense of mortality has remained. ‘It has made some single women want to grab life by the balls,’ she says. ‘It’s made them more adventurous and open to experiences they would never have considered before.’
As for couples, ‘Most thought that, once lockdown lifted, they’d go back to how they were before. But our sexual response system doesn’t work like that. If you’re now used to having sex once a month instead of once a week, weekly sex is no longer appealing. The new habit replaces the old. Something new has to happen to reset the system.’
My online orgy-goer pal doesn’t intend to reset. If she finds herself in a relationship with a lover who isn’t keen, she will maintain this hobby on her own. As for me and my canine ménage, I’m hoping that my beloved may eventually leave the house in order to foster the element of distance required for desire. (I’d also welcome him getting a haircut.)
Collectively, where we go from here is not yet clear, amid all this dragging flatness and over-familiarity. The lifting of lockdown hasn’t been joyous. ‘Many people lost their jobs. Add fuel problems, potential food shortages, climate change and inflation to the mix and none of us are feeling particularly perky,’ says Cox.
‘But sex likes positive thoughts, not anxiety – and positivity is in short supply.’ The irony is that for both polarised parties – those going at it and those abstaining – what we could all probably do with is a really good shag.
