“At least you’re getting laid,” a single friend texted me, during a vent session about, well, everything, I texted back an eye-roll emoji. Hugs? Sure. Quarantine sex? That's been a different story.
The past year has been difficult, exhausting, and heartbreaking. Since March 2020 many of us have been stuck in our homes and working from home—or, let’s be honest, living at work—while dealing with the day-to-day of running a household during a pandemic. There's been much handwringing about how single people are faring—a year of sexual solitude at worst and “dating” on socially distant park benches, but it's not like those of us in relationships are living it up in bed either—no matter what kind of high jinks you might imagine two people trapped at home are getting up to.
I’m something of a newlywed, but it hasn't really felt that way. We celebrated our second anniversary in October of 2020, and it wasn’t what we imagined. Our two-week trip to Europe? Obviously never happened. We’re so close from spending all this time together, but I’m tired. He’s tired. Our once spacious seeming home somehow shrunk to half its size. It has not been sexy, for obvious reasons.
“Stress causes cortisol to be released in our bodies, which can cause us to feel tired and withdrawn,” says psychotherapist Rebecca Hendrix, LMFT. “And then our adrenal glands have kind of been ‘on’ for 12 months; that part of us that goes into flight, fight, or freeze if, say, a tiger came out of your bedroom right now.”
I’m not alone regarding my lack of libido. An informal poll of friends and their friends (who chose not to share their last names) was telling, as were replies from coupled-up people who are navigating this pandemic with children.
“With a little one at home, nighttime is really the only time we can get down to business,” says Jonathan, a 43-year-old parent of one in New York. The paradox? Nighttime is also when he and his partner want to sleep off the stresses of the day. While he says he feels lucky that quarantine sex isn't totally off the table these days, he wouldn't mind if it were a little more frequent.
Courtney, 31, and her husband are parents to two children in Haikou, China. She told me she was having trouble connecting with her partner, saying, “Sometimes I’m all touched out by the end of the day. Sometimes we put ourselves to sleep putting the kids to sleep and don’t end up staying up to have private time.”
Even those partnered without kids are struggling with responsibilities that are tough to navigate during normal times, let alone during a yearlong quarantine.
“Managing the care of a beloved chronically ill dog, almost losing her, and saying goodbye to our 19-year-old cat were among our biggest challenges,” says Amy, 50, of her time in quarantine with her husband in Queens, New York. “Grieving and seeing pets in pain while we’ve been trapped at home is torture.”
The job situation isn’t helping. “My significant other lost his job and I’m self-employed, so just not having our small space alone for nine hours a day impacts my work,” Boston-based Heather, 45, told me. “Everything he does is annoying, even when he is just trying to be nice and make me lunch.”
One of the problems, says Hendrix, is that all of our roles and activities have merged, making it hard to separate your work self from your parent self—and your partner self can get a little lost.
“We work and we can be a wife, a mother, a girlfriend, a best friend, a companion to ourselves, and most of those roles are in different [physical] places,” she says. Now that every facet of our lives has converged into, essentially, one room? “It can be very agitating to the nervous system.”
What my husband and I have been doing is making it a point to get out of the four rooms we live in to encourage intimacy. We’ve gone to contactless Airbnbs in our state for romantic weekends, and have made regular hikes part of our routine. We also try to work in different rooms during the day so that when the day ends, we have a feeling of separation—and something to talk about. If I don’t hear his work woes as they're happening—and he mine—we have something new to catch up on over dinner.
I’m not the only one who's at least trying to get some of the spark going.
“Sundays are a protected day,” says Boston-based Holly, 38. “We don't schedule any obligations to others, since it's the one day we both have off together. We make a plan early in the week. It's usually something small—taking a walk, trying a new recipe, tackling a home project together—but it helps to have something to look forward to.”
And Amy says her husband has been stepping up the romance too: “He knows I miss staying in great hotels, so sometimes he makes me ‘French-hotel breakfasts’ with croissants, fresh juice, strong coffee, and other European-ish treats.”
Sari Cooper, founder of Center for Love and Sex, and a certified sex therapist and coach in New York, says that just paying attention is key to reigniting romance and intimacy.
“Try carving out time to focus on your partner,” Cooper says. “Bringing some special gift—it doesn’t have to be huge, but a candle, a drawn bath, an invitation to give and receive massages—is like a promise to the relationship. You’re saying I see you, I remember us, I’m committed to keep the pilot light burning.”
As for my relationship, we’ve both been trying to get away from the idea of how life is “supposed to be.” Maybe I thought my second and third year of marriage was going to look a certain way, but what it has been is a lesson on being there for each other and getting through the hard stuff. I’m grateful to have a partner at my side who is here for the hard stuff.
Tanya Edwards is a New England–based freelance writer and editor.
