Sex and dating in a pandemic
Masks. No kissing? Socially-distanced dates. We get the perspectives of a health professional and a single woman.
Name: Ramatoulaye (“Rama”) Keita
Hometown: Conakry, Guinea
Current Residence: Hyattsville, Maryland
Living Situation: Family home, currently with 61 year-old mother
Age: 32
Occupation: Senior Manager of Community Health, Whitman-Walker
Photo caption: As a person living with Sickle Cell Anemia, an important part of life during COVID-19 has been about taking care of my mental and physical health.
Metro Weekly recently ran an article covering a Harvard University study that offered guidance on safe sex during the pandemic. There was a line that really stood out to me that said:
“Partners should wear masks during sex, shower both before and after sex, and clean the physical space used for sex with soap or alcohol wipes.”
Is this realistic to ask of people?
It depends on who your partner is. I’m sure with a casual sexual partner you’d be more hesitant to ask them to do all of those things. That’s why communicating with your partner is extremely important. As intimate as sex is, a lot of people still struggle to have direct conversations about setting parameters.
What questions are you getting from patients about how to protect themselves during a pandemic?
Folks want to know what physical distancing looks like, and honestly, it’s different for different people. I talk to a range of people -- from sex workers to folks in monogamous relationships to frontline and essential workers. Nobody is in the same situation.
Most of the questions are:
“Should I still be having sex?”
“How do I tell my partner that I don’t want to have sex or that I’m anxious?”
“Do I have enough refills so that I don’t run out of HIV medication and have to go in person to pick up more?”
“Can I kiss someone since saliva is the easiest way to get COVID?”
Speaking of kissing, what is the advice you’re giving to people?
It’s not that you can’t kiss people, it’s that you need to be aware that you could get sick if you don’t know what your partner has been exposed to. If the person you’re involved with isn’t in your quarantine cohort, it’s important to know what your partner has been doing and whether they’ve been exposed to COVID. It’s an opportunity to really get to know your partner, to have a conversation about protection and what safer sex looks like to you.
What are you hearing from your clients about what dating is like now that most states have reopened?
Dating isn’t gone, but it just has to be more creative.
I think there’s a shift from only FaceTiming to going on socially-distanced picnics. COVID testing dates have definitely become a thing.
Communication about whether partners have been truly quarantined has been challenging for some people. There’s a lot of mistrust about people being honest about whether they’ve been exposed. There’s also a lot of judgment towards people that still have to go to work, but not everyone has the luxury of working from home.
Is COVID going to make people more thoughtful, considerate and maybe more conservative when it comes to sex? Or do you think that people will be so hungry for physical contact that they’ll be willing to take risks?
I definitely think that isolation is going to lead folks to seek out sexual encounters because it’s really hard for people to feel like they don’t have autonomy. How long can people sustain being separated from their sexual partners? People need community and physical support.
Photo caption: COVID-19 has forced me to be still, to be proactive, to be self-aware, to sit in gratitude, to be present, to love on my community.
What do you want to take to the other side of this?
Knowing that there is no one way to deliver and access health care. For the longest time, people have thought that receiving health care meant: you walk into a building, see your doctor, and then get medicine. But COVID has made changing that mode of thinking possible now that so much of the care we provide has moved to the virtual/online platforms. In a way, COVID has made health care more innovative.
With respect to sex and dating, I hope people will take away from this that intimacy has many different definitions.
This is a moment where we are required to be still, to not be impulsive, to understand ourselves and our community. I’m hoping that people can still approach sex freely, but know that it can be done safely, on their own standards and their own terms.
It’s your body, your choice, and your rules.
Name: Abby Fenton
Hometown: Southwick, Massachusetts
Current Residence: Washington, DC / Scotland, Maryland
Living Situation: Splitting time between apartment in DC and shore house in MD, but never without rescue dog, Rico
Age: 45
Occupation: Chief External Affairs Officer, Whitman-Walker
Photo caption: I took a few new selfies for my new Bumble profile. Here's my "red lipstick one" and here's one of me looking out the window."
Help us understand what dating was like for you before COVID hit.
Kind of non-existent. It’s hard for a 45 year-old out there! I actually wasn’t online dating at all in the couple of months before the pandemic hit, I had decided I would take a break. I’m also very happy being independent and single, so I guess I wasn’t putting a lot of work into it either. I can’t say it was bad because I wasn’t doing the work, and it is work.
You decided to reactivate your Bumble account for a bit during quarantine. Can you talk to me about that decision?
My experience with online dating is that I find that men have very little curiosity about the women they’re getting to know. There’s a lot of interest around just hooking up and moving real fast without getting to know a person. Now that physical interaction is largely out of the equation, I thought this quarantine might be a good time to find people online that are actually curious about getting to know me and like to pace things out.
What kind of considerations would you take into account about seeing someone in person during the pandemic?
I think that if I trusted that the other person has been operating in the same, very cautious way that I have been, at this point in time I would feel comfortable with a social distanced date of some sort. Something like a walk with masks, maybe a drink outside, something like that.
Have you experienced or heard about any sort of old-school things finding their way back into dating?
I have found that talking on the phone has come back in a big way. I feel like you can really sus out chemistry on the phone.
I’ve started this other friendship with an artist that I found on Instagram, and I just fell in love with his work. I sent him a message on Instagram that was like, “I love your work and I’d love to learn more, but you don’t have a website or anything” and he sent me a message back that said, “Great! Would you like to talk on the phone?”. And so we talked on the phone for a really long time and since then have developed this kind of awesome friendship. He’s doing a lot of painting right now, and every time he finishes a piece he sends me a picture. He’s not dating material, unfortunately, but it’s just so old-school to call someone just to talk.
Photo caption: Rico, my adorable rescue dog!
What do you want to take to the other side of this in terms of dating?
I’m hoping that once this is all over that people continue to take more time to get to know one-another before things ramp up a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I love making out with people! But there’s something really special about making out with someone that you really like.
I hope that we can all take enough time to really do that, both out of respect for ourselves and to really feel what that feels like.