After a sex slump, could a post-lockdown boost improve your health and happiness?

Rewind two years and imagine a scenario in which you felt sexy. Had you had a great week at work and been out for a cocktail to return to your partner and decide that, yes, you absolutely were up for a rather long session on the sofa? Maybe you were on a date, the conversation was scintillating and you were suddenly aware of that feeling? Or were you on your own, scrolling through some erotic literature, only to find that your hands wanted to wander?

Now fast forward a little in your memory to the bit right afterwards. How did you feel? Flushed? Relaxed? Happy? Generally satisfied? If the encounter - either alone or with another - was good, you probably felt all that without giving much further thought to the boost your health might’ve had — but the host of physical and mental benefits of having sex are well worth taking note of.

In spite of these potential health benefits - and much-discussed projections of a lockdown boom in babies - it has now been well reported that the Covid-19 pandemic and numerous national lockdowns, have been a dampener on many people’s sex lives. According to the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, the pandemic has sent our collective sex drives into a nosedive in the UK. Sara* was one of those people.

She tells The Independent: “I was living in the UAE with my husband of six years when Covid hit. Prior to that, we’d been having sex two to three times a week, mostly after going out on a date. Our lives were busy and so when we had the time to finish the day with a dinner and a drink together, we were both excited to see one another and wanted to have sex as a way to end the evening.”

But that all changed in lockdown. “[My husband] was furloughed at the beginning of the pandemic and I was working from my laptop and, well, I just didn’t feel very sexy, both because I was lazing around in leggings and didn’t feel that sense of occasion, and because I was quite anxious about what would happen to us in the future,” she says.

Anxiety was also at the root of Lucy’s hiatus from sex during the third lockdown in England: “I felt so low during January and February that I found it impossible to reply to friends’ messages, let alone bother to flirt with strangers on apps. Swiping became another source of stress as opposed to anything exciting - not to mention that the prospect of sitting on a cold bench [on a date] on a cloudy day or in the rain seemed really unappealing.”

I asked my Instagram audience whether they were having less sex (78 per cent of my followers reported they were) and whether they felt less desirable, and, if so, why? It returned a huge number of responses with some clear trends: many felt tired, nervous, disconnected from their former self and, overwhelmingly, that their body had changed which was a problem for them.

Relationship therapist Clare Faulkner explains that this can be a completely standard response to an event that has an impact as huge as as Covid-19, saying that “stress and anxiety is a big factor that shuts down the need to be sexual”. Therein lies the rub at the moment: feeling sexy and having the release of satisfying sex is symbiotic for many. Although, Faulkner adds that “for some people, sex is a way to soothe, so that might be a mechanism they use — but for others, they might not have the capacity at the moment to show up in that space”.

Interestingly, masturbating alone saw an upsurge during lockdown. Pornhub reported that their traffic increased exponentially, while LELO, which sells sex toys, saw sales increase by around 148 per cent at the peak of lockdown (the Sona tm 2 Cruise and Soraya Wave were the most popular models).

If you’re struggling to feel sexy, Dr Amani Zarroug, clinical psychologist and relationship and psychosexual therapist, offers reassurance that getting back to that place could have nothing to do with making complicated changes during a time fraught with stress. Instead hone in on what does it for you.

“Esther Perel [Belgian psychotherapist] says ‘when do you feel the sexiest?’ People often feel sexual when they feel confident. So what is it that makes you feel confident? Is it being witty? Lean into that and perhaps try stepping out of the ordinary, or doing something ritualistic —whatever works for you,” says Dr Zarroug. “You could also try to tap into associations like, say, a lipstick that makes you feel good, and which will give you the opportunity to flirt and offer the opportunity to be sexual. It all starts with the self — someone else isn’t necessarily the key to making you feel sexy.”

Being able to get back into the swing of your sex life could have a range of health benefits — both mental and physical. Faulkner says that they can range from “an improved mood and less stress thanks to the release of oxytocin that the hypothalamus releases after sex, and better quality sleep as a result of the secretion of prolactin sex prompts.”

And Zarroug agrees that studies have shown that sex is “amazing for heart health, for blood circulation, for skin, for immune system, and for pain relief — even from headaches. If you catch a headache at its onset and masturbate, it can relieve pain because it flushes oxygen into your brain, which helps to reduce the inflammation.”

But the argument for sex as a health boost doesn’t finish there; the very same oxytocin that reduces stress also bonds you to your partner. It’s also a key hormone released by mothers and babies during breastfeeding, and whenever snuggling up to someone you care about, prompting it to be dubbed the ‘cuddle hormone’. Zarroug is keen to add this sense of closeness to the list of health benefits of sex: “If you think of the entire person, sex is a biological, psychological, and social boost. It can also help with crucial things like feeling desired and self esteem.”

Sold on sex as a way to give your health - and spirits - a little leg up right now and wondering how often you should be having it? Faulkner is unequivocal that it is not the frequency that matters but how good it is: “I’m not interested in quantity of sex but in quality of sex, and the pandemic has given people a chance to re-evaluate what they want. I’d suggest moving away from goal-orientated ideas of sex, which are divisive, into the mindset of asking what we want encounters to look like and how we can introduce some novelty. It’s about creating a space where intimacy might - and the operative word there is might - show up.”

And if you’re keen on reaping the health benefits but don’t have someone to have sex with, or if you find yourself currently without the bandwidth to engage in sex with someone else, Faulkner says that “masturbation is a similar physiological experience, and some benefits can be met alone”.

As we move out of lockdown and into a new era of our lives, the opportunity for more sex is growing. Whether you want to find new partners, or reconnect with an existing one, it is clear there are mental and physical health benefits to reconnecting sexually, and it doesn’t require unrealistic amounts of sex to get there.

*Name has been changed