How COVID19 changed our sexuality and ability to connect

The COVID19 pandemic has brought about profound changes in the way we live and interact with the world, and in our sexuality as well. Beyond the immediate health concerns, only taken seriously by a small part of the GLBT community, it has left a lasting impact on our emotional and social lives, often extending into the space of our intimate relationships. In this article, we will explore the ripple effects of the pandemic on our sex lives and how it has led to a shift in our desires, libidos, and the way we connect with our innermost desires, but most importantly, others. All of this, backed by data sampled directly in the community.

Diminished Sexual Appetite after the COVID19 Pandemic

I was talking with a Sir Brother of mine, Sir Rein, during one of His visits to Our House. We were mutually sharing our sense of confusion towards our feelings and emotions regarding the BDSM sessions that We’ve had in the past two years. In my case, I’ve experienced a strange lack of sexual desire, libido and kinky thoughts. It is true that I’ve personally been extremely absorbed by business, but it’s not like I didn’t want to have sex. I just wasn’t horny. The worries in my minds were much louder than the need for sex, and I’ve started to feel this might be a consequence of the (ongoing) CoVid19 Tragedy.

If, like me, you are one of those people who took this seriously, you might have also experienced a sense of hyper focus on survival, meaning taking care of the things that really matter for survival (eg: health, fitness, nutrition, business, money..), and a sense of feeling like all the rest, all the life “before CoVid19” was something that has been frozen. Not destroyed, not removed, but put in a state of “pause”.

I think that sense of pause was accompanied by something more hideous, more powerful and dangerous: the sense of not seeing a clear end to this situation.

As a result, while I haven’t stopped meeting My slave or My boy, I was not as connected as I’ve always been. Sure I had a great time, like always, and we’ve had fun. But IT was like if I was anesthetized to the galvanic feeling of the power of BDSM, when all of your body and every cell of your brain is hyperactive, raw, and boiling. Something had changed, something very difficult to identify, and the more I kept going, the more I started noticing I was not creating long big sessions like before anymore. It was more minimalistic in a way, and way shorter.

Trauma and Emotional Blockage

One might be a sub or a Dom, and that doesn’t change the situation. We all have been wounded, and we are all traumatized. We have all been in a state of shock. If the reader is lucky enough to be born after the pandemic, do know that things were much different before, and a real trauma was lived by every human being.

The problem, is that most of us didn’t take this trauma seriously, nor did they ever faced it and analyzed it. We as a whole community and society, are not facing it, none of us.

I’ve watched military trucks on television escorting 500 coffins out of churches in Italy, where I live, because there was no place in the graveyards anymore, nor was it possible to do functions with that ratio. Those were people that lived just miles away from me, lives, families, all gone like in war time. Together with this kind of reality, the fear of catching it and infecting my spouse, the fear of dying alone in some corner of my house (because that’s how many, many people died). On top of this, the brusk interruption of all physical contacts, gatherings, sex. And then, to really make it complete, the vaste social community (including a huge part of the gay community) not giving a fuck about it, still meeting, still not wearing masks, still going to parties, and still being a disappointment.

All of these things happened one after the other, and they’ve happened probably at the same time to you in your own diverse environment. And afterwards, we have been expecting for ourselves to just be able to keep functioning, going to bed, taking a shit, going to work, without falling apart? Well, I’m sure you’ve managed; I did. But at what cost?

The cost was Emotional Blockage. The way, was not to feel those emotions, not to feel the desperation, the fear, the anguish, the rage and fury and the betrayal of our brothers men, not giving a fuck, spreading fake news, slowing down the process with pointless ideological bullshit, and to still function above all this (which is still happening), we just “toughened up”. But at what cost, again? We’re all affected with PTSD, in my opinion. It is also not just my opinion, as there is plenty of research on how the covid19 pandemic affected our sexualities.

As kinksters, we are hyper sexual beings. Be it solo, with masturbation, or be it with others, we express ourselves and create our worlds throughout two things that were removed from us: creativity and emotional connection. How can we still enjoy things “the way they were before”, since we’re blocking ourselves from feeling our emotions fully? How can we be able to function fully as kinksters, if we can’t even feel our real feelings?

Solo sex quality was also affected by COVID19

I am not a psychologist and my lectures on psychology are old and outdated, but I think that the massive trauma that covid brought with itself, extends also to areas of our Ego and the relationship we have with pleasure. Personally, I’ve found that I’ve moved from shooting at least one or two loads a day (where in the good moments I would get to even 4/5, when really horny), to maybe one or two a week for years after the pandemic.

But what happened? I still look at the same images online, and I still put in my favorites and put my likes to the same things that I’ve always liked… and yet. I didn’t feel connected, I didn’t feel as present and in the moment, and I couldn’t feel my cock responding. Of course, I might decide to “take the matter in my own hands” and sure, I get hard and I’ll shoot my load. And that’s that.

Instead, before COVID19, I used to at least once a week have these long jerking off sessions where I’d make of it almost a spiritual experience, as it should be; an actual session of cock worship. I was fueled up with passion, with lust, and I loved edging. Now I’m still the same man, I still like the same things… but fuck, why does it all feel so distant and far away from my core?

I believe the answer once again relies on the internalized and not at all processed (and ongoing) trauma; I also believe there is a part of me that feels that it would be “wrong” to enjoy sex like before right now. Because I am alive.

I am not sure if this was a sort of sense of guilt from seeing all of those people die, or if it’s because I felt that since I got lucky (and also I was very very careful) I should only focus on survival, as said. But I do know that I didn’t relate to pleasure like something always available and to look for. Pleasure like it was before, just like hope in the future like it was before, just seemed to be something out of reach.

The rampage of Pornography on Social Media

When it comes to porn, I’ve always been a passionate consumer. I’ve started enjoying porn when I was very young, and since then, it was love at first sight. With pornography I’ve always been able to cut away from the stress of the day a moment that was just for me, myself and I.

Pornography is masturbation, even when you’re not touching yourself, because it is something that by definition involves on you and your fantasy and mind, your interpretation of what you see, and your ability to build with your imagination. Be it imagining to be at the place of one of the guys in the scene, or be it actually building a whole fantasy, you participate actively; you can do so, because you don’t know the people on the screen or on the magazine. They don’t exist. They are ethereal, they are images of men that exist, but in your mind they exist as a projection of your desires. They are your hopes and aspirations.They behave the right way, they have the personality you imagine, the voice you want, and they do whatever you want in your fantasy.

But reality ain’t much like that, is it? After all, this is what makes pornography fun, and what makes it different from a sexual or romantic interaction with another human being. Personally, I’ve always loved amateur pornography. I don’t really like “content” with actors and perfect bodies, cause they all feel artificial and fake. The perfect fantasy, must be a fantasy you can relate to, something you could experience. Not something that is clearly made up for business and emulating soullessly an act of fornication.

In time, we’ve moved from what I call “static pornography” to what I call “live pornography”. Since the advent of Twitter as a mass social porn network, we all watched static porn; yes, even when it was on Tumblr. You didn’t get to see the lives and “real” thoughts of the pictures and videos to which you were jerking off to.

Once, this was content to which you had the perception of “your stuff”. Now, instead, we all get to see “other people’s stuff”, because it’s their social network. We get to see them desperately trying to get social validation or simply money, we get to see them to fail at hiding that, we see marketing effort to monetize over pornography. Sex work is great. People without identity and only hunting for metrics in a dead game made of followers, isn’t so sexually stimulating though.

Pornography started to become homologated, like everything else in the modern gay community and even more so in the fetish community, and with that, I believe it started to become boring. Where is the space for your fantasy? Where is the space to your imagination and your solo time, since now you’re on an actual social platform where the other person is actually involved?

I believe this has a lot to do with the sense of less interest and less satisfaction towards porn.

Conclusions and Sampled Data

Look at the data sampled down here. This data is possible thanks to all the people reading the previous version of this article, which was an interactive step-by-step reading, in which each reader could express if they agreed and also felt the same way as the writer. This data has been sampled in compliance with privacy, and the users were informed about the anonymous event-hit sampling.

We all more than anything need something very specific: peace, love, steady calm and mutual help. We need mutual respect, we need to stop fighting over ideologies (we’ve also fell in this trap years ago), stop fighting over bullshit, stop needing to feel better than one another.

We need to come together and admit we’re all hurt by our contemporaneity. A contemporaneity that has grown colder, lonelier, scarier and way worse than we’ve ever thought it would have been. We need to find again our roots, go back to feel our feelings. And when trauma is involved, sharing is always the first and most important thing to do. 

Talk to each other, help each other, admit your fragilities.

Only this way we can finally come back together, at some point, and start feeling fully complete, again.