The Global Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Individuals' and Couples' Sexuality

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related restrictions significantly impacted individuals' health, wellbeing, and security. Isolation, limitation of movement, social distancing, and forced cohabiting have had a strong influence on all areas of people's lives as well as on their sexuality. Investigating how the COVID-19 outbreak and its consequences impacted people's sexuality was the primary aim of this review. Particularly, we focused on: (1) the variables associated with the improvement or the deterioration of individuals' and couples' lives during the pandemic; (2) the use of sex as a coping strategy; (3) the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on LGBT people. Results have shown that the worsening of sexual life seems to be related to couples' conflict, emotions and psychological difficulties, being female, being single or away from the partner, being a health care worker, and having children. Moreover, a detrimental effect on sexuality was associated with stress, forced cohabitation, routine, anxiety and worry about the job and the pandemic, feeling partner distance, being unhappy with their partner, and lack of privacy. On the other hand, improvements in sexuality were associated with living happily with a partner, being happy and satisfied with a partner, feeling less stressed and more bored, having more free time, having fewer recreation opportunities, and having minor workload. During the pandemic, there was an increase in using sex toys, pornography consumption, masturbating, and trying sexual experimentations. Among LGBT people, an increase was found in the number of casual sexual partners potentially due to the perceived lower likelihood of transmission through sex. Moreover, the increase in sexual activity may have represented a coping strategy to quarantine-related distress.

Is There a Direct Link between Sexual Satisfaction and Restrictions during the Second Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

“…The present study found that single people experience lower levels of sexual satisfaction than those who live in a relationship with a partner. The results of this study is consistent with other studies [17,26,33,34,36,42,46], which were performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. A greater decline in sexual satisfaction was found in people who did not at the time live with their partners [17,33] than in people living as a couple.…”

“…Finally, another study reported an increased risk of sexual dysfunction and depression among Polish adults during the pandemic [32]. Furthermore, scoping reviews [46,51] showed that sexual difficulties and sexual dissatisfaction are related to difficulties in emotion regulation. Therefore, Fischer et al [51] suggest that future research should include emotional regulation interventions to alleviate sexual health problems.…”

“…On the other hand, research during the pandemic indicates that a worsening of sexual well-being was experienced overall by those who were at base more vulnerable to high distress. High distress, anxiety, and depression were predictors of high risk of sexual dysfunction and low sexual satisfaction in numerous studies (e.g., [19,20,24,25,28,29,32,35,36,[39][40][41]43,44,46]). Zhang et al [39] showed that Chinese participants who experienced a high stressful impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their life were likelier to assess the quality of their sex life as worse and to declare a lower frequency of sexual activity.…”

“…A greater decline in sexual satisfaction was found in people who did not at the time live with their partners [17,33] than in people living as a couple. Besides relationship status (i.e., being single), poor couple relationship quality [19,41,57] and partnership conflicts [28,46] also contributed to a weakening in sexual behavior and worsening satisfaction during the pandemic. A recent mediation study showed that increased COVID-19-related stress contributes to worsening well-being via decreased levels of sexual and romantic functioning [58].…”

“…A scoping review [46] showed that the worsening of sexual life is determined by lack of privacy, couples' conflict, high distress, negative emotions, and psychological difficulties (anxiety and depression). Moreover, sexual dissatisfaction is more likely among women and single people.…”