Has This Pandemic Stolen My Hope for Great Sex in 2020?

Or do I just need a change of perspective?

At the end of 2019, I was at a turning point in my life. I’d spent the previous year peeling away the shells of old disappointments and heartbreaks and striving to find optimism about my future — particularly when it came to love and sex. I had a terrible setback that autumn, but I brushed myself off, more determined than ever not to let one person undo all the work I had done to find my way back to hope.

“I’m gonna have so much sex in 2020, it’ll be criminal,” I joked to my sister last December.

And the crazy thing was — I believed it. I don’t think I’ve ever been so optimistic about relationships, which was saying a lot for me, after nearly 25 years of abusive, emotionally-damaging romantic entanglements.

I finally felt like I really understood myself and cared enough about myself to be able to attract and maintain a relationship that nourished me. I was more excited than I’d been in years.

And then a pandemic hit.

“I can’t believe how different life has become in a few months,” I said to my bestie, Sunny, a week ago. “In December, I was spouting off about how much sex I was gonna have this year and now I don’t even know how I’ll meet anyone. I can’t even leave my house.”

We talked through it, since she is also currently looking for a relationship, and she told me about a friend of hers who had wisely said, “There’s no better time to meet someone online than right now. You can’t rush to hook up, so most likely, you’ll be forced to actually talk to one another for weeks or maybe longer and really find out if you are compatible.”

I like that perspective. I definitely appreciate the empowering spin on the desire to meet people in a pandemic.

Sunny suggested we get on Tinder. Of course, we discussed the fact that the kind of person we want might not be on Tinder, but also…it’s a big pool with lots of fish, and doesn’t that work out in our favor, even if it’s less likely that our “type” would use that app? (Can someone do a statistical analysis on that? Maybe I’m wrong…)

“I don’t know…,” I hedged. “I want to be intentional about this. I don’t want to meet someone online just to pass the time until lockdown ends.”

“We just have to write our profiles in a way that is very clear about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what we want.”

“Hmmm…” I couldn’t quite get it up to fully agree with her, so I gave her a noncommittal sound, instead.

Nevertheless, we agreed to share drafts of our profiles within three days.

“You could still have sex in 2020,” Sunny insisted. “There’s more than half the year left…”

I swore off dating apps years ago. Like, forever. I was committed.

It’s not that I’d had particularly bad experiences with them. In fact, I haven’t even gotten so far with one that I actually had a date. But I’ve tried many services, and each time, the impersonal nature of it was too hard for me to get past.

The guys were wonderfully clear about what they wanted, but every profile seemed to contain a frat boy’s wish list. “I like skinny, athletic women — no exceptions, no fatties,” they’d say. They’d go on to describe behaviors, wardrobe preferences, grooming habits, and age.

I was further discouraged (though not surprised) by the number of these particular men who were interested in “hookups only.” I have no objection to using dating apps for hookups, but was there anyone there looking for a relationship?

I’m happy to say I never had to endure receiving a dick pic from anyone, but I did get lots of messages saying, “Hey, what's up?” “U wanna fuck?” and “How much do you weight [sic]?”

It couldn’t have felt like a worse fit for someone like me.

The thing is — meeting people online is both easy and hard. It’s so easy to fall in love with someone online (believe me, I know), and to become overwhelmed with the fantasy of it all. But that doesn’t always hold in real life.

And for me, the pressure of that fantasy feels unbearable — I don’t think I want to meet someone after we’ve spent weeks having cybersex. How do we even know we’ll get along in real life? It gives me anxiety just to think about it. And I have enough anxiety around dating and sex. I don’t want to add anything more to that mix.

Ideally, I want to meet someone in real life. I want to get to know them as a friend or coworker. I want to see what arises and how we navigate conflict. And whether or not we like each other’s smells. I want to flirt by touching each other’s hands and nudging each other with our elbows. I want to be able to look into another person’s eyes.

Then, then I can decide if I want to date them, become intimate, explore a future together.

I don’t know if I can do this, I texted to Sunny on Wednesday. I’m not sure I want it.

Don’t worry about it, she replied. I’m freaking out, too. Let’s do some more thinking about it.

So…no sex in 2020, after all?

She texted back a question mark.

Though I’ve made lots of jokes about how much sex I’ll have this year, and have been pondering if that will actually happen, I have to remind myself that I actually set sexual intentions for the new year. I look at those again and again to remind myself of my focus.

I didn’t intend or resolve to have sex with someone in 2020 — that’s out of my control (to some extent, since it involves another person). No, my intentions were all about me and my expressions of sexuality. About growing intimacy in all my relationships so that I don’t come again to the doomed dynamic of relying solely on a lover to meet all my intimacy needs. About being more in touch with my body and experiences of pleasure.

I also have to remind myself that I’ve been trying to broaden my definition of sex. To me, sex is not just about two people in an intimate act. Sex is so much more than that. And by my new, expanded definition, I am having sex. And very satisfying sex, at that.

There’s no question mark, after all.

What I question is whether or not I want to move forward with a dating app. My feelings about online dating haven’t changed. I’m still pretty sure it’s not a great fit for me.

All in all, I won’t be disappointed that a pandemic stole my chance at having a great sex life this year. It didn’t. I’m already enjoying a great sex life.

And if I happen to meet someone this year, I’ll still be fine, even from six feet away. Because my sex life and sexual satisfaction are of my own making — not dependent on another person or the end of a pandemic lockdown.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

More on sex & dating: