The Latest Victim of Covid: Sex Between Married Couples

Source - Surveying 1,500 adults last spring just after the pandemic hit, researchers at the Kinsey Institute found nearly half said their sex lives were in decline. Though some had actually expanded their sexual repertoires through the global crisis, they tended to be younger people living alone, rather than long-married spouses quarantining together in homes piled high with homework and laundry.

“For most couples, it’s hell,” said Peggy Kleinplatz, a clinical psychologist who detected “a greater sense of claustrophobia and desperation” in phone calls with clients since the pandemic began.

“The vast majority of couples I’m seeing are finding it impossible to carve out time that’s uniquely for each other, without having to take care of work, children or cleaning the house,” said Dr. Kleinplatz, a professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa.

That chronic stress is smothering libido and sexual frequency, notes Lori Brotto, a psychologist. ... “None of us firmly grasped the toll homeschooling and taking care of children without any [help] would take on couples, relationships, privacy and intimacy,” said Dr. Brotto, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Columbia. 

“Couples are home working together – you’re beside each other all day long. It has translated into a lot more emotional distance,” Dr. Brotto said. “Separation and a sense of separate identity are critical for desire and cultivating interest in sexual activity.” ...

A year into the pandemic, some are mistaking their partners’ exhaustion for sexual rejection, said sex educator Emily Nagoski. ...

For those whose marriages were already sexless before the pandemic, or where one partner has more desire than the other, months of lockdowns “magnify what’s not working in the relationship,” said Seattle marriage and family therapist Mindy McGovern. 

Since I've spent decades as one of the leading and most vocal supporters of Some Sex Marriage, I'll begin by assuring you I will not be discussing the situation in my own private life. Other than to say what my beguiling Irish Rose and I have remains beautiful and healthy and even this long into my career I'm still coming up with innovative game plans and scripting my first 15 plays with the best minds in the game and leave it at that. 

With that as preamble, I'll just say this is in the running for the least necessary scientific studies of all time. Up there with the ones that "prove" diet and exercise are good for you or that one Cambridge did that demonstrated Spider-Man isn't real. Oh, so being stuck in the house all the time with your spouse and kids, both of you working, overseeing the remote learning, doing laundry and cooking and dishes and cleaning doesn't do much for your Sexy Time? Really? Who could've seen that coming? Thanks, science! Forget those pikers who developed the vaccine in record time. This is why you guys make the big dollars. 

But sarcasm aside, I'll answer my own rhetorical question. The ones who have been most draconian with the lockdowns are the ones who didn't see this coming. Or didn't care. The best, healthiest and most beneficial thing to a marriage is having some sort of outside interest. Something that you do without your spouse. A club. An activity. Friends. Classes. A performing art. A sport. I mean, one of the reasons people golf is just to get away from their loved ones for four or five hours. Outside interests are what save marriages. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that. Or as Chicago put it, "Everybody needs a little time away."

Crazy as it sounds, for months last year my state forced the closure of gyms, the logic being that that would keep people healthier. When common sense will tell you that what's healthy is working out. Then coming home from that gym filled with attractive, athletic people feeling a little better about yourself after a good workout will make a married person ready for some serious monogamous banging. Not getting shushed from the next room because your S.O. is in a Zoom meeting. 

Besides, nothing is better for a healthy sex life than a hard day's work. How do you think married couples living on a farm or in a cabin out on the prairie somewhere always managed to have a ton of kids? Because they labored from sun up to sundown, bored out of their minds. There's nothing like spending all day plowing your Back 40 to get you in the mood for some nighttime plowing. I watched a video of an old Monday Night Football game from 1976, and what struck me was every commercial that wasn't for beer was for car care products. Batteries. Air filters. Motor oils. Now the ones that aren't for beer are for fast food or penis medicines. The point being men didn't need medicinal help for their erections because they didn't live at the Sonic drive-thru. They came home from their jobs, worked on their cars for a couple of hours, and came into the house healthy and horny and ready for love. 

So thanks for this Covid. Remember back in March when the shutdowns began and everyone was cracking wise about the Quarantine Baby Boom that was going to happen in nine months? Well it's been 12. And all the lockdowns have done is make married couples less interested in each other. And get the human race one step closer to extinction.